Flash! This just in! A lot more people are viewing videos online than they used to. Pew Internet & American Life Project releases a study that finds almost half of online adults have visited video websites. In December 2006, only about one in three had. That is quite the leap, and there is no reason to think 2008 will see a reversal.

Information Week tries to tie this growth to a previous NEA report that fewer adults are reading books for pleasure. My first reaction to that angle was to scratch my head. IW would be the last publication I would expect a nearly neo-Luddite reaction. To be fair, the article seems to offer the answer to that speculation.

Lee Rainie, founding director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project and author of the Pew video study, said his organization had not attempted to correlate the long-term decline in reading with the recent rise in online video viewing. “My guess is we would find a reverse correlation because the people posting material online have the same demographic as avid readers,” he said. “My guess would be that this isn’t the cause of the downslide in reading.”

(T)he group Rainie identifies as likely avid readers — those with some college education or college graduates — show a larger growth in affinity for online video than other groups…

This observation tells me there are opportunities for B2B marketers to find an audience. The common meme about online video viewers having nanosecond attention spans has a kernel of truth. However, this group might also be receptive to more sophisticated appeals than we commonly assume. But it still has to cut through the clutter!

By the way – I appear in an online video just released for marketers wondering about getting started in social media. It has images and sounds…and yes…even some written words for you avid readers.