Pew Confirms Growth of Online Video Viewing

Web video viewership has almost doubled in two years, according to a report from the Pew Research Center. Nearly a fifth of Internet users watch video online almost every day. Women are catching up to men in terms of online video usage. And a growing number of recession-conscious Americans claim they are using the Web as a cable TV substitute.

Those are some of the findings found in the latest report from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, focused specifically on online video. According to the report, 19 percent of Internet users surveyed claim they visit video sites in a typical day, up from 8 percent three years ago.

"The American audience for online video-sharing sites like YouTube and Google Video continues to grow swiftly across all demographic groups, far outpacing the adoption rates of many other Internet activities," the report said. "Fully 62 percent of adult Internet users have watched a video on these sites, up from 33 percent" in December 2006, when Pew last measured such activity.

Twenty-two percent of American adults say they have cut back on their cable or TV services over the course of the past 12 months. That compares to just 9 percent who have cut back on their Internet service. And within that cable-cutting segment, 32 percent say they’ve taken the step of connecting their computers to their TV to consume Web video.

Online men are almost twice as likely to rearrange the living room in this regard; 29 percent of male viewers who watch TV and movies online have connected their computer to the TV, compared with 16 percent of online women.

The report is based on the findings of a daily tracking survey on Americans’ use of the Internet. The results are based on data from telephone interviews conducted by Princeton Survey Research International between March 26 to April 19, 2009, among a sample of 2,253 adults, 18 and older.