Online video access is impacting the way people watch television and how they search and find recommendations that might go beyond video content, two separate studies have found, MediaPost reported.

NBC Universal's Digital Insights and Innovations team found online viewership of its show NBC Rewind attracted about 5 million unique users in the fourth quarter of 2006, but by May 2007 the show had 10 million uniques and 35 million individual streams of NBC TV show segments.

A study by online video company Veoh showed recommendation engines making personalised video recommendations on to users based on their past behaviour had a click-through rate of only 2.4 percent (compared to .3 percent for generic editorial features) for personalised recommendations of 2 million unique users.

Veoh also found recommendation engines generated a response of 29.6 percent for keyword searches when people use personalised recommendation engines (versus 22.3 percent for non-personalised engines) to find programming.

“What's the impact on presenting advertising? This probably raises more questions than it answers," Francis Costello, Veoh's vice president of strategy and business development, is quoted by MediaPost as saying. He suggested this issue could have big implications for serving ads as well as selecting creative messages.

The NBCU team also found a “slight bump” in those viewing NBC rewind during lunch on weekdays, “suggesting online might be generating a new form of midday prime-time,” although the heaviest traffic continues to take place at night, during regular prime-time TV viewing, MediaPost reported.