Today’s Wall Street Journal is reporting the results of a Nielsen Online study on how people consume videos online.  Among the more interesting findings, women preferred to watch TV broadcasts online, while men preferred to watch user-generated videos on sites like YouTube, Revver, and others.

Results from this study (the first major one of its kind) could be very useful to business owners who are incorporating video clips into their websites.  Knowing your customer is obviously a key component of business success, and understanding the type and nature of content your customers find most interesting can help determine what information (and in what format) is carried on your business website.

Business owners who have not yet taken the plunge into video content creation should really consider exploring the idea further; as the so-called “new media” of websites and mobile devices become more prevalent, the numbers of potential customers will continue to grow.  Now is really the time to partner with a multimedia website designer and transform existing content (TV commercials, end user instructional videos, in-house training material, etc.) onto your website or generate new video content specifically for your business website.

Some videos of course trandscend all demographics and become “viral”.  My friend Caroline Melberg has a great blog post on viral marketing and how it can benefit small business owners, check it out.