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The study, compiled and conducted by The Nielsen Company seeks answer to the question: Will consumers pay for online news and entertainment they now get for free?

More than 27,000 consumers across 52 countries acted as respondents to Nielsen. And the answer is a definite “maybe.” As expected, the vast majority (85%) prefer that free content remain free. Yet there are opportunities to be found in the details. Indeed, when asked to focus on specific types of content, survey participants are more willing to at least consider paying for particular categories.

The study says that the online content for which consumers are most likely to pay – or have already paid – are those they normally pay for offline, including theatrical movies, music, games and select videos such as current television shows. These tend to be professionally produced at comparatively high costs.

Consumers are least likely to pay for content that is essentially home-grown online, often by other consumers at fairly low-cost. These include social communities, podcasts, consumer-generated videos and blogs.

In between are an array of news formats – newspapers, magazines, Internet-only news sources and radio news and talk shows – created by professionals, relatively expensive to produce and, in the case of newspapers and magazines, commonly sold offline. Yet much of their content has basically become a commodity, readily available elsewhere for free. Whatever their preferences, consumers worldwide generally agree that online content will have to meet certain criteria before they shell out money to access it.