By Andrew Wallenstein
A flurry of eye-glazing new studies on online/TV video consumption have been released in recent days from Nielsen, Horowitz Associates and European Interactive Advertising Assoc. Nothing revelatory in any of it, just the very things you've intuited already: More people are watching video online? Check. Younger viewers more likely to sample on new platforms? Check. TV networks are doing a goozzzz...zzzzz.....zzzzz (snore)....

Yet another such study comes courtesy of ChoiceStream today that covers the same ground (reported here by THR's Alex Woodson), but also keys in on an interesting point that doesn't get much mention: discovery, or the amount of time it takes to find a video worth watching. The stat to note: 62% of online video watchers say it takes at least a few minutes to find the vidoes they want to watch, faring slightly better than TV (72%). 34% of respondents for both online video and television reported frustration with the amount of time it takes to access the video they want to find.

Now if I'm in the online video business, I should get a wake-up call from those numbers. Basically, viewers see only minimal improvement in terms of discovery time when the PC is stacked up against TV; given all the customization available online, shouldn't online do a lot better than that? For all the focus devoted to "time spent" on specific sites, maybe this kind of study will remind folks that the "time spent" actually reaching the site is just as crucial.

For more on online-video discovery, here's a deeper dive into the subject I wrote last month for THR.