• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, March 12, 2008

The percentage of people who use a TV network's or program's Web site to watch TV shows does not appear to be expanding, but people who use those sites seem to be using them to watch more programming. That's one of the patterns that appears to be emerging from the second annual study analyzing how people use Web sites to watch TV programming from Knowledge Networks. Another key finding is that younger viewers tend to utilize such sites more often than older viewers, and they tend to be more favorably disposed to advertisers who sponsor them.

"In terms of usage, we saw almost no change year-to-year, in terms of the proportion of people who said they used a network Web site or watched a network program online. It was almost identical year to year," said Dave Tice, vice president and group account director at Knowledge Networks and director of The Home Technology Monitor, noting that the percentage of people falling in that category remained at about 30% in the fall of 2007, which was about the same as Knowledge Networks' benchmark survey in the fall of 2006.

"There's a group of people doing it, and they're doing it more, which is where the increase in traffic is coming from. It's not from more people using it," he said.

Knowledge Networks, however, found generational skews among people using network and program Web sites, with so-called Generation Y viewers most likely to utilize the Internet to watch TV programming.

The good news for advertisers is that the younger users also are more open to brands that sponsor the online versions of TV programs. Generation Y respondents were 60% more likely to consider a brand that sponsored an online video of a TV program, vs. 50% for Generation X users and only 40% among Baby Boomers.