In 2007, the online audience in the U.S. will be made up of 97 million females and 91 million males. This female-dominated ratio does not hold, however, for the total online video audience.
Last year, 71.2% of males viewed online videos, while only 55% of females did. For this year, the percentages are expected to be 78.4% of males and 66.1% of females. This gap is expected to shrink even further in coming years, with projected percentages of 88.8% of males and 84.6% of females in 2011.
eMarketer defines an online video viewer as "an individual who downloads or streams video (content or advertising) at least once a month," and an Internet user as "someone ages 3+ who accessed the Internet in the last 30 days from any location."
This lopsidedness is not only surprising because there are more females online than males, but also because more females watch television than males.
A study conducted by InsightExpress for Advertising.com in January indicates that 48.6% of U.S. consumers are likely to stream news clips, 47.4% are likely to stream music videos, and 32.6% are likely to stream movie trailers.
Another 25.7% of respondents indicated that they are likely to stream TV shows, while 20.5% indicated they are likely to stream user-generated videos.
A study carried out by Piper Jaffray showed the differences in what kinds of videos males and females are likely to view online.
News is popular all around, with 52.3% of males and 48.9% of females in the U.S. watching these clips. Males (44%) are more likely to watch amateur videos than females (30.4%). On the other hand, females (47.8%) are more likely to watch movie previews than males (35.8%).
In slightly related news, DoubleClick has found that about 8% of online users are interacting with online video ads. This includes all types of interactions with video ads, including mouse-overs, expansions, clicks, and other types of interactions. Video ads that just have a "Play" button receive an interaction rate of about 0.32%, which is more than twice the click-through rates of 0.1 to 0.2% that typical image ads receive.
A gender split for this information would be interesting to see, and will probably be researched further in the future as metrics firms delve into a keener awareness of online videos.
Sources:
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1004705
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?
fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=57413
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/03/30/
consumers-pay-more-attention-to-video-ads
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