I missed this a couple of weeks ago when it came out (Greg Sterling referenced in it a post today): A Harris poll has found that frequent YouTubers watch less TV.
Recent research by Harris Interactive® suggests that this fear may indeed be warranted. Over four in 10 (42%) online U.S. adults say they have watched a video at YouTube, and 14 percent say they visit the site frequently. Almost one in three (32%) of these frequent YouTube users say they are watching less TV as a result of the time they spend there.
And they don’t want pre-roll advertising.
If YouTube is considering airing ads before its videos, they may be advised to halt that thinking; 73 percent of frequent YouTube users say they would visit the site less if it started including short video ads before every clip.
What the poll doesn’t seem to cover is the type of content YouTubers spend their time watching — is it MSM clips, cats juggling, UGC, vlogs, or all of it? Also, how important is the community aspect of YT to frequent users?
From the tables on the link above, note that 36 percent of frequent users spend less time on other sites. Also, some 23 percent of the oldest age bracket watch video on YT, while among the 18 to 24 crowd, 73 percent have watched YT. On the flip side, 39 percent of 50 to 64 have watched video on an MSM site, but among the younger cohort, not so much. There’s a lesson in there, I think, about how MSM is losing the young audience. The relatively low “somewhere else” numbers are where newspaper sites are losing out.