Joe Mandese’s Online Media Daily story explains why a Ball State study shows that online video usage has been “vastly overstated.” The reason: Previous estimates were based on people self-reporting what they watched, while the Ball State (rather expensive and labor intensive) study actually observed them.
Watching online video is perceived as cool, while watching a lot of TV…not so cool. Hence the overstatement of the former and the understatement of the latter.
What this means for measuring video usage: Rely more on your internal video metrics (e.g., number of times a video was viewed, how much of it was viewed, whether it was forwarded) than on attitudinal research.
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