A new study conducted by Nielsen has revealed that consumers will definitely “maybe” pay for online news and entertainment content that they now receive for free. However, the majority of respondents (85 percent) indicated that they’d rather the currently free content stay that way. Interestingly, survey respondents were far more willing to pay for certain services, while others don’t seem to be worthy of breaking out the credit card for, especially if they’ve previously done so. The study is in depth, as Nielsen surveyed over 27,000 consumers across 52 countries.

The big winners in the “will maybe pay for” category include theatrical movies, music, games, and professionally produced video (i.e. television). The current print industry buzz around microtransactions in online magazines and newspapers fell into the middle of the pack, an improvement over a Forrester Research report in November found that 80 percent of U.S. consumers would not bother to access online newspaper or magazine sites if they were no longer free. Rounding out the pack were amateur productions including podcasts, consumer generated video and blogs. Interestingly, social communities (i.e. social networks) scored just above podcasts and below Radio. A dichotomy unresolved, as the gaming activity on these social communities is clearly generating large amounts of revenue, that some are obviously interested in paying for.

Some statistics from Nielsen’s survey:

• More than half of those surveyed (52%) preferred a microtransaction payment model over a full subscription to acquire content. However, only 43% indicated that implementing an easy payment method would make them more likely to pay for online content.
• Better than three out of every four survey participants (78%) believe if they already subscribe to a newspaper, magazine, radio or television service they should be able to use its online content for free.
• At the same time, 71% of global consumers say online content of any kind will have to be considerably better than what is currently free before they will pay for it.
• Nearly eight out of every ten (79%) would no longer use a web site that charges them, presuming they can find the same information at no cost.
• As a group, they are ambivalent about whether the quality of online content would suffer if companies could not charge for it—34% think so while 30% do not; and the remaining 36% have no firm opinion.
• But they are far more united (62%) in their conviction that once they purchase content, it should be theirs to copy or share with whomever they want.

What’s also interesting to note from this survey is the top slots. Movies, Music, Television, and Games. Is there perhaps a program a great number of us already have installed on our machines that gives us direct access to all 4? If you own and iPhone or iPod, or simply like music, television, and movies at your fingertips, chances are you’ve got iTunes installed on your machine. While I’m not going to say that Apple itself has revolutionized the industry, but they have certainly built a platform that has introduced millions to the concept and procedure of purchasing content online with a direct digital deliver method. Now….if print media publishers could reconcile a content gateway through iTunes…well, that might drastically effect the results of the Nielsen survey.