Ipsos Study: Americans Love Streaming Video

Ipsos Study: Americans Love Streaming Video

Americans still love their TV, but online video has also found mainstream acceptance: At the end of 2006, nearly six of ten Americans (58 percent) age 12 or older with internet access had streamed some form of video content online, according to findings released by Ipsos Insight from MOTION - its biannual digital video study.

In other words, 44 percent of the U.S. population age 12 or older - some 100 million people - have streamed digital video online. Moreover, over one in four Americans (28 percent) age 12+ have downloaded a digital video file, with a significant amount of overlap between the two types of digital video.

Among those that stream video online, teens and young adults are the most likely to do so: three in four of all teens age 12-17 and young adults age 18-24 in the U.S. have streamed digital video content online. Moreover, they are more likely to have higher incomes and be highly educated, even more so than others with internet access.

This highly coveted demographic appears to be watching digital video more and more on PCs or portable devices. Teens and young adults, on average, have stored 20 percent of their entire video library either digitally (on a hard drive) and/or have burned it onto DVDs.
Among the various types of video streams offered online, shorter video clips, such as those on video-sharing sites like YouTube, are by far the most preferred.


Three-quarters of all digital video streamers have streamed short news or sports clips; two-thirds have streamed amateur or homemade video clips. Roughly 40 percent of those who have streamed or downloaded video content have accessed YouTube.

Other video file sharing sites, such as MySpace and Google Video, are also common destinations for video streamers, with about one in five having accessed those two sites as well.
Though short video is the rage, most Americans have never streamed or downloaded a full-length TV show or movie. Nevertheless, many seem to find the idea appealing: 43 percent of digital video downloaders and streamers express some level of interest in downloading full length movies in the near future, and 38 percent express interest in full-length TV show downloads.

The most common barriers to downloading are users' unwillingness to pay for content and the perceived difficulty of burning files onto DVD - presumably to later watch on TV sets.
"Obviously, with more technology coming onto the market facilitating the sharing of video files between PC and TV, some of today's purchase barriers may soon begin to dissipate at some level. Yet, this also seems to illustrate the virtues inherent with streaming shorter video clips for today's video enthusiasts: easy 24/7 access to preferred content for reasonable fees or free via entirely ad supported models," said Executive Vice President of the Ipsos Insight Technology & Communications practice Brian Cruikshank.

The MOTION Winter Wave study was conducted in two phases. A representative US sample of those 12 years of age and older was conducted in December of 2006 to determine the prevalence of digital video behaviors. A follow-up online study was conducted in January of 2007 among those 12 and older in the US that have downloaded or streamed video content online.