Silicon Alley Insider - Michael Learmonth | July 3, 2008 9:05 AM

Some interesting data out of ABC: Predictably, the network’s Web viewers are younger, more affluent and better-educated on average than those watching TV. They’re also nearly all women.

With shows like “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Desperate Housewives,” and “Ugly Betty,” women have long formed the core of ABC’s viewership on TV. But according to ABC research, women are even a bigger part of their audience online.

Women comprise as much as 90% of the online audience of some ABC shows; overall ABC.com’s audience is 85% female. Why? ABC’s research says online viewing is predominantly to catch up on missed episodes — and therefore dominated by the networks’ most devoted fans, women.

ABC provided SAI with a copy of its research conducted by research firm Magid Associates. Other notable findings? Viewers are more than twice as likely to remember an ad watched online than on TV, a stat which is the basis for demanding higher ad rates for online video than on TV.

Sources tell us the asking price is $45 to $65 CPM, or cost per 1,000 ad impressions, for ABC.com, compared to a $20 CPM for the same shows on TV. (TV audiences are still much, much larger, so the network is still making more money on TV, just at a lower ad rate. ABC.com streamed 80 million videos in May, Nielsen says, but only to 6.1 million unique visitors.)

It also helps that ABC.com has a single-sponsor ad model — one advertiser per show — so online viewers are watching fewer ads. They also tend to watch alone and in a “sit-forward” environment — not curled up on the couch. All of which could contribute to greater recall.

In addition to being predominantly female, viewing patterns were different for the Web than on TV. Namely, while Friday night is typically a low-rated night on TV, it’s the most-watched night on ABC.com.

Among ABC’s findings:

• 54% of online viewers recall the brand name of a sponsor, vs 22%, on average, for network TV.
• Online audiences peak on Friday night, the day after the network’s biggest shows, “Lost” and “Grey’s Anatomy” air on Thursday.
• On a nightly basis, online audiences peak at 10 pm, in the middle of primetime.
• The biggest segment of online viewers (29%) are under 24, and nearly 50% are under 29, compared to ABC’s TV audience which has an average age of 50.
• ABC’s shows skew female, but online overwhelmingly so. Some 85% of ABC’s online viewers are women.

source: SAI

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