• ClickZ, Tuesday, January 23, 2007 11:18 AM

In yet more groundbreaking research, JupiterResearch finds, unsurprisingly, that consumers prefer video content that's both free and without ads to services supported by ad or a la carte models. More significantly, the Jupiter report paints a limited picture of the growing-and slowly settling-online video market.

Jupiter's results say 37 percent of consumers with high-speed Web access watch online video, while roughly half look for full-length programs, live broadcasts and additional media footage rather than short clips. Just 21 percent of respondents said they prefer ads to paid content; the article doesn't say how many prefer paid content to ads.

It sounds suspiciously like the Jupiter survey is long on adult respondents and short on Gen Y and younger generations--though that could be wrong, as the article doesn't discuss the survey methodology. However, if these results hold water, then the online video phenomenon should be classified as over-hyped. The industry needs more than 37 percent of the Web population to be consuming online video--and YouTube needs more than half of those folks to be interested in watching short clips in order to attract advertisers.

The results contrast with an AP/AOL study from last September, which found that 54 percent of Internet users watch long or short-form online video and an astonishing 71 percent preferred ad-supported video to video they have to pay for.

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