Advertising.com’s Bi-Annual Online Video Study indicates that the majority of consumers, at 62 percent of respondents, are viewing video online. The study also concludes that the majority of these viewers are aged 35 or older and their preference tends towards news clips as opposed to user generated content.

The report notes that while consumers continue to incorporate streaming video into the online experience, a difference remains based on Internet users age group.

As previous studies have shown, older consumers use streaming video to gain information, which can be seen by their preference for online news clips, while younger consumers are streaming content for entertainment purposes, such as viewing movies, TV shows and user-generated videos online.

My question is: which came first, the viewer preferences or the digital content models and media sites?

As a twenty-something who likes to spend my time online getting information as well as entertainment, I wonder if the differences in viewer preference tell us something deeper than, old people like news, young people watch YouTube.

The MediaPost article, “Times Touts ‘All the News that’s Fit to Click’” highlights the shift in the marketing of New York Times online media offerings. After the fall of TimesSelect, NYTimes.com has launched a multi-channel branding initiative to show non-readers (or should we call them non-clickers?) what they are missing.

While NYTimes.com continues to add blogs to its mix, much of the multimedia content the new initiative underscores isn’t even new. Murray Gaylord, vice president of marketing for NYTimes.com explains,

“Internal research showed us that people think the Web site has what’s in the paper, and that’s it…We needed a campaign to show them what’s online–like video, slide shows, interactive blogs, and reader comments. There’s all this content they don’t know about.”

The two year TimesSelect project was by no means a flop—paid subscriptions generated around $10 million a year in revenue. Still, “projections for growth on that paid subscriber base were low, compared to the growth of online advertising,” Vivian L. Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of NYTimes.com, said upon the announcement earlier this month. Interestingly, while many of my friends enjoy the columnists and other features that were off-limits to non-subscribers, only those in that over 35 bracket seemed willing to pay for TimesSelect. We twenty-somethings came of age with Napster, watch Daily Show clips online when we want, and can now buy the new Radiohead album digitally for whatever price we choose—it is hard to get us to pay for information when we don’t even pay for our digital entertainment.

And what if the majority of online news sites just aren’t hip enough to draw in younger, more digitally aware Internet users? I can barely keep up with all the innovation on sites like Facebook but that is, to a certain extent, what keeps it interesting and engaging. Maybe the Times will get it right for the under 35 set with their destruction of the TimesSelect pay wall and their emphasis on a multimedia, interactive digital news experience.