Vanessa writes: We often read about the sizable and growing audience of online video but less documented are the habits of an online video viewer. Given viewership has pushed online video to the mainstream, we at Next New decided to partner with the largest video platform, YouTube, and research group Frank N. Magid Associates to find insights into this demographic.

Today we released the findings of the first ever extensive study on how audiences view web original content versus television. The study revealed that the majority of viewers of web original content find these videos to be just as, if not more, entertaining than television programming.

Here are some of the highlights:

• Viewers are 2.5 times more likely to be fully engaged with online video than viewers who watch traditional television.
• Viewers of web original content are spending 13% less time with traditional television.
• 60% of online video viewers watch web original content on a weekly basis.
• 4 out of 10 online video viewers share the videos with others.

To find out more behind the methodology and findings of the study, check out our full release.

Next New Viewership Gaining on Prime Time Television

Given these findings, and the growth story we’ve had this year at Next New Networks where viewership is up 500%, we decided to put that in context of television viewers and see where we would sit with broadcast TV network ratings. While it’s not strictly apples to apples, we graphed our US weekly total unique viewers to television’s prime time viewership over the week of Sept 20 - 26th, which is television’s first week back for the Fall season. Here’s what we found:

[Mashup of a recent TV by the Numbers chart, with data from The Nielsen Company. Next New Networks viewership data provided by Google Analytics and YouTube Insight.]

Check out our full research report release to read more of the findings of this study, and this great article by Ad Age on our latest numbers and research. And for more information email me at vanessa (at) nextnewnetworks (dot) com.