ABC Says Online Video Test a Success

Disney said Monday that its pilot program of offering downloads of prime time television shows from the ABC network the day after they air has been a huge success. In the first month of the test, videos were viewed more than 11 million times.

The test will end as scheduled on June 30, ABC says, in order to allow time to pour over research data collected during the trial.

The viewership for the test is larger than the number of videos sold at $1.99 USD each on iTunes over the past nine months, when ABC began offering videos on Apple's popular download service. 6 million ABC videos have been downloaded from iTunes the network said.

Additionally, some key metrics have both pleased and validated the company's business model of putting free video on the Web. As opposed to an average 40 percent recall rate of commercials on television, viewers of online videos were able to recall information from commercials 87 percent of the time.

Such figures could be useful to Disney in selling ad space, which allows Disney to offer the television shows online as a free service. The program's success has also led the company to decide to relaunch the service in the fall.

While much of the service will remain quite similar to the current test version, ABC said it will make minor tweaks based on customer feedback, and also offer different shows over time.