Not surprisingly, the majority (85%) of online consumers prefer free content, but some categories they would be willing to consider paying for access, according to a new survey from Nielsen.

Nielsen asked more than 27,000 consumers across 52 countries about what types of online content they would be willing to pay for. The survey found consumers are most likely to pay for online content they would pay for offline including movies, music, games, and television shows.

Consumers are least likely to pay for content on social networks, podcasts, consumer-generated videos and blogs.

The survey found consumers worldwide generally agree that online content will have to meet certain guidelines before they spend money to access it:

    *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.