- E&P Staff

NEW YORK Consumers barely spend any time watching online videos, according to a new study on behalf of Nielsen's Council for Research Excellence.

Those surveyed by Sequent Partners and Ball State University's Center for Media Design spent less than 1 percent of their day watching online video.

The findings were revealed on Tuesday at a meeting hosted by media agency MPG in New York. "This may be the first study to document the dramatic overstatement of online video and mobile video," Jim Spaeth, a founder of Sequent, told MediaPost.

One reason online video usage is not as high as previously thought is during surveys people overstate their viewing time because it seems new and cool, Spaeth explained. Watching lots of TV doesn't have as much social cachet so people tend to underreport how many hours they watch.

Survey researchers observed participants' media habits twice, mostly the same day of the week for each person, and spread across weekdays for the sample in the spring and fall 2008. The research was conducted in six designated market areas. The final sample included 952 days.

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Related: "Make-or-Break Time for Online Video"

Source: E&P.com