Comments on: Do We Watch the Web the Same Way We Watch TV? Not Really

By: Dr. Taly Weiss

Dr. Taly Weiss — Thu, 27 May 2010 08:19:24 +0000

Are the results reported derive from a 2009 survey (as presented in the above tables) or from Nielsen's 2010 data?

By: @eadsd

@eadsd — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 18:49:10 +0000

I'm sure I'm in the minority, but my entire family only watches TV online now (and has since about September 2009). When we installed AT&T Uverse for other reasons in January, we got their video service and liked it. However, we found that we were used to just going to Hulu, ABC.com or CastTV to watch what we felt like when we wanted to watch it and video service wasn't worth it for the money.

There's still room for online to improve (NFL, CNBC, for example). But generally, it works well as a "lean-back" experience in the right setting.

BTW – I have realized I watch far more commercials online than when I was using a DVR.

By: Nina Gerwin

Nina Gerwin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:10:14 +0000

Thanks for all of your wonderful insights. I just love this industry!

These results certainly make sense when you think about who these folks generally are: dedicated TV viewers and people who follow specific TV shows.

Dedicated TV viewers means that they have probably already seen the repurposed TV ads shown; therefore, their recall of those spots would be much higher than say, their first time viewing an original internet ad. If you ran that survey on a different site that was dedicated to original video content, then the results would probably be very different.

Marketing is all about understanding who your customers are. Equally important is to understand the audience of where you want to advertise. If someone loves Lost, then they’ll generally watch Lost on TV (where they probably learned about it in the first place); on cable on-demand; online; and now mobile, iPad, iPods. People love their content and are becoming platform agnostic as to how/where they view it. The point being, find your customers wherever they spend their time and speak to them there.

Couldn’t find the trackback url and the link doesn’t do it either. Here’s my blog post on this really interesting survey! http://wp.me/pxoDD-5n

By: richie

richie — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 22:03:13 +0000

interesting reading – but what about the video content thats not TV shows and appears only on the web. It has completely different viewing characteristics. Typically viewed alone, and viewed because the viewer WANTS to watch it.

We produce “internet media” that goes online for clients and often gets used by TV shows. But the production focus is online. It has different production and presentation values.

And our business sees steady growth.

By: Greg

Greg — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:18:25 +0000

I may be in the minority, but I only watch television on DVR, Hulu, or similar websites. Therefore, advertisements aired online have a more significant impact than ads aired on television; the reason being that you can fast forward through commercials on DVR, but you’re forced to endure them online. I’m wondering whether this will eventually have any effect on the value of online advertising, whether its “web-original” or reused from TV.

Also, the only commercials I watch on television are during sporting events, as the NFL, MLB, NBA, NCAA, NHL are the only programs I watch live. I’m curious whether this is common and whether it will effect the value of ad-space; in other words, whether the presence of DVR & Hulu will add another qualitative value to the Nielsen ratings.