Report: Viewers seem OK with more Web video ads
You'll actually sit through more ads in online videos than you'd think, The New York Times reports, citing internal figures from Turner Broadcasting.
You might be more willing to watch video ads online than you think you are.
According to The New York Times, Turner Broadcasting, which owns TBS and TNT, recently tested how long people will watch television shows online with few ads, compared to how long they will watch shows with a slew of ads embedded in them. Jack Wakshlag, the company's chief research officer, told the Times that when viewers were presented with more ads, they would still "spend approximately the same amount of time watching episodes online."
According to the Times, which cited Turner's internal statistics, people who watched Turner's 30-minute broadcasts online viewed 40 percent of a show when they were presented with one minute of ads. They watched 37 percent of the show when they were forced to sit through 16 minutes of ads. For hour-long shows, those who viewed a little over one minute of ads watched 59 percent of an episode, while those who had 20 minutes of ads watched 49 percent of the show.
The results of that study, according to the Times, made Turner realize that having to watch more ads isn't necessarily an issue to online viewers.
Video ads have become a key part of most Web users' lives. In October alone, 84.1 percent of U.S. Web users viewed online video, according to data released last week by research firm ComScore. Over 4.6 billion video ads were displayed during the month with over 1.1 billion of those ads shown on Hulu. All told, the average viewer watched 34.1 ads during the month.