• by Wayne Friedman , March 6, 2008

NBC Digital Entertainment says it has good news for Internet TV advertisers on several fronts.

From a regular quarterly consumer-research study, NBC says more viewers are watching entire online episodes than ever before--some 92% of viewers that start an NBC video watch it all.

Media agency executives have been concerned that viewers are sampling shows online--just viewing for a couple of minutes, rather than staying for the entire episode. That means they are also missing out on commercial messages.

The study also notes that online viewers--via the NBC Rewind video player--have higher brand recall and increased satisfaction now than in previous periods: 86% brand recall versus 70% previously.

NBC says it was the No. 1 network site in December 2007 in both average time spent watching shows on NBC Rewind--11.25 minutes--and with the number of unique visitors, 7.9 million.

NBC also says that 77% of users stream video as a complement--not as a replacement--to TV viewing. The reason most often given for watching an online episode is that viewers may have missed an airing of a TV episode.

So far this year, NBC.com has had some 40.9 million overall video streams--24% higher than a year ago. NBC.com unique visitors grew 7% to 15.5 million. This year, "Deal or No Deal," "American Gladiators" and "Biggest Loser" are the sites' top performers, delivering over 70 million page views in 2008.