• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, August 5, 2009

Marketers eager to exploit the Web's viral potential will be interested to learn that a full one-third of all videos are shared online. That's according to a collaborative study to be released Thursday by Yahoo, market research firm Interpret LLC, Warner Bros. Media Research, Havas Digital, and Omnicom's PHD.

What's more, viewers are twice as likely to ignore TV ads as online ads, and are 28% more likely to pay attention to online advertising, according to the report.

Online video already accounts for nearly 32% of all time spent online by video viewers, while approximately 70% of respondents report watching online videos both at home and at work.

"Unlike television consumption, which mostly happens during the prime-time hours of 8 p.m. to 11 p.m., people across all demographics are watching online videos consistently throughout the day and night, with the exception of dinnertime," said Jason Kramer, chief strategy officer at Interpret. "This fundamental shift in consumer behavior opens up opportunities for publishers, advertisers, agencies and marketers."

"For example," added Kramer," Rather than advertisers only vying for spots on hot television shows that appear during prime time, they can leverage online video to reach target audiences more often than just once per week." The study showed spikes in online video consumption among men, women, students and full-time employees during the hours of 12 p.m. and 3 p.m., and then again between 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. The lowest was around dinnertime from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

The most engaging videos translate into high satisfaction for users, high brand recall for advertisers, and a greater inclination for consumers to seek product information.

Indeed, more than a quarter of respondents searched for more information about a product and visited the brand Web site after viewing what they deemed "high engagement" videos. To be specific, a full 27% of respondents who remembered seeing an ad searched for more information about the featured product after watching high-engagement videos, versus only 13% for low engagement videos. Meanwhile, 28% of consumers visited an advertised brand or product's Web site after viewing a high-engagement video versus only 10% for low-engagement videos.

Yahoo plans to base a video's success in the marketplace on new engagement models, which factor in the completion of videos, attention paid to videos, and actions taken by users who are watching a particular video. "Publishers still have questions about what works, and advertisers have been slow to move dollars online because there are no established metrics," said Radha Subramanyam, head of corporate and media research at Yahoo.

For the study, Interpret conducted an online survey of 2,024 broadband Internet users between the ages of 13 and 54 who had watched a video online in the past 24 hours.