A new study shows that less than 25% of online video viewers would be willing to pay an extra $10 to $15 each month to access premium TV content.  That should confirm to service providers involved in the Time Warner-led TV Everywhere that the best they may be able to hope for is a sticky service, rather than an additional revenue generator.

But buried under the results is a glimpse of what users really want out of an Web video site—easy navigation and customization.

 The survey of 1,300 Internet users was commissioned by video publishing services vendor Digitalsmiths. Sixty percent of those surveyed said that if they have the opportunity to use advanced “Google-like” search capabilities in video to locate specific scenes, segments, characters, or actors within an online movie to TV series, they’d be more likely to use a video site. And more than 41% said they will be more likely to visit a video site if they have the ability to create customized clips from online films and TV to share with friends, post to video sharing sites or create mobile ringtones.

The yen for customization raises a host of copyright-protection issues, but one stroll through YouTube and one can see that such customization is already rampant. Bringing that capability to a TV Everywhere type service would give content owners, in partnership with service providers, more control over the use of the content they put online.  And with TV Everywhere being envisioned as free to existing multichannel video subscribers, those search and customization features could even be sold as premium services.

Filed under: Broadband, Video by Scott Sleek | Social tagging: Google > TV Everywhere > Web TV > YouTube