From The Big Screen To The Computer Screen.

A new report by Ipsos-Insight surveyed over 1,000 US consumers ages 12 and over to determine their level of awareness and usage of movie downloading.

Despite having not received the media or marketing attention of digital music, familiarity with movie downloading is actually fairly high among consumers — while 33% of respondents have never heard of movie downloading, and 20% say they don’t know or are not sure, the remainder, just under 50%, are familiar with the practice (43%), have engaged in it in the past but no longer do so (3%) or currently download movies (1%). Awareness is higher among certain demographic groups, such as men, those between the ages of 12 and 34, and those with annual income over $50,000.

As the chart above indicates, the percentage of US consumers who have actually downloaded a movie from the Net is quite low — just 4%.

The practice of acquiring movies on file-sharing sites has never reached the levels seen for digital music over similar networks. Part of the reason why movie downloading is not as popular might result from the rise and fall of music file-sharing services. The percentage of US consumers who have downloaded digital music or MP3 files from an online file-sharing site (i.e. a site that does not require payment for songs) has declined in the last three years. Some of these services, like the original Napster (not the re-launched Napster, now a premium site) were shut down, and many of the services that remain have uneven reputations, both from their perception as venues for copyright violation, and because of the viruses, worms and spyware that often pose as music files on these sites, leading to infected computers.

But the major change that has moved people away from music file sharing services is the emergence of successful premium sites. Only 2% of US consumers surveyed in December 2002 said they used these services, compared to 11% in December 2004.

A number of premium movie services, such as Movielink and MovieFlix, offer consumers the ability to rent movies over the Net. Files are downloaded to the computer and expire a set time later. According to NPD Group, demographics for these sites are similar to that of early digital music downloading — for example, men comprised 80% of movie downloaders from these sites in Q2 2004.

So far, premium movie sites have not created a thriving industry the way iTunes has for the digital music market. It’s not clear whether the sites’ business models need tweaking, or whether awareness is still too low for greater success. Online movie sites run into some factors that didn’t affect digital music providers. For one, movie file sizes are much bigger, requiring more time for downloading. Additionally, services like NetFlix combine the convenience of the Web with the ability to watch movies on a TV instead of a computer.

According to the results of the Ipsos poll, movie downloading activity will grow only minimally in the next year, as less than 10% of respondents say it’s “somewhat,” “very” or “extremely likely” that they will download movies in the next 12 months.

This presents an opening for the movie industry. Matt Kleinschmit, Vice President with Ipsos-Insight’s Technology & Communications, explains: “With the music industry struggling in the past few years to define and integrate the role of digital acquisition methods into the existing marketplace, it appears that the motion picture industry is presented with a unique opportunity to learn from the evolution of that category. Specifically, the profile of ‘first’ movie downloaders reflect, in many ways, what we saw in the early days of music downloading — that is, they are younger, male, and those seeking technological methods of primarily free acquisition. It will be interesting to monitor how this develops over time, to see if online acquisition of movies mimics what we have seen in the digital music category, where fee-based downloaders have skewed to an older and more gender balanced profile.”

To view charts CLICK above on ‘More Images’.