Internet Marketing Blog

Social Networking Statistics

Morgan Stanley's March Internet trends report shows that social networking sites are quickly becoming major hubs of online activity: Six of the top ten Web sites are social.

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Conversational Marketing Presentation

For The Minnesota Council Of Nonprofits Technology Conference - 3/27/08

This is the presentation my Tunheim Partners colleague Pat Lilja and I gave to the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits annual technology conference this year:

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Google For Windows Mobile

Google released today a search application for Windows Mobile devices that puts the Google search box on the first screen, eliminating the need to fire up a browser and hunt for your bookmarks or type www.google.com into the address bar.

Google, of course, touts this as a major time saver, and it is. Google observes a 20% increase in the number of searches performed after people have installed their mobile device. But it also conveniently grabs some of the most important mobile device screen real estate to keep the search company front and center for the coming mobile revolution.

I just installed the app on my T-Mobile MDA and I gotta say, I like it a lot. I already search a lot on my phone but I'm sure I'll be Googling much more now that two steps have been eliminated.

I've been saying for some time that people can demand content on their own terms and while that mostly means time-shifting content, it will increasingly also mean place-shifting content as wireless broadband becomes ubiquitous.

With all the trends pointing to a mobile future, it's time to start seriously thinking about ensuring that your content is mobile-friendly.

Marketing To Millennials Presentation

This is a presentation for a seminar Pat Lilja, my colleague at Tunheim Partners, and I conducted on Wednesday for some public health people who are interested in how to reach the Millennial generation. We will have video of the session soon.

New Word Of Mouth Networks - Teens Talk Online

I haven't fully digested the new Pew Internet & American Life Teens & Social Media report, but the summary makes clear that teens' online behavior is creating new networks that will require online word of mouth marketing to be an increasingly crucial tactic within overall Internet marketing strategies.

The Pew study shows that they are prolific online content creators:

• Of the 93% that are online, 64% of them have created content online.
• 39% of online teens share their creations online.
• 33% create or work on others' blogs or web sites, be it for friends, groups they belong to, or classroom assignments.
• 28% have created their own blog.
• 27% have a personal web site.
• 26% create mashups.
• 55% have created a social networking profile at sites like Facebook and MySpace.
• 47% have uploaded photos.
• 14% have posted video online.

Teens share their online content and that sharing builds the foundation of their word of mouth networks because that content is a virtual conversation starter. The Pew study found:

• 89% of teens who upload photos say that people post comments about those photos at least sometimes.
• 72% of video posters say those videos elicit comments at least sometimes.
• 76% of teens who use social networks say they leave comments on other people's blog posts.

It seems clear that teen marketing for the short term, and, as these kids grow up, overall Internet marketing for the long term, will depend upon tapping into these online word of mouth networks.

Social Bookmarking Demographics

In an article about social bookmarking in the Winter 07/08 issue of Search Marketing Standard, Joe Whyte cites Quantcast demographic data for some of the top bookmarking sites. This data is hard to come by, so it is valuable in helping to understand the respective services' audiences. Using eBizMBA's list of the top 30 social bookmarking sites, the following is a list of those sites with links to their demographic profiles at Quantacast:

1. Digg.com
2. Technorati.com
3. del.icio.us
4. Propeller.com
5. StumbleUpon
6. reddit.com
7. Fark.com
8. MyBlogLog.com
9. slashdot.org
10. kaboodle.com
11. Bloglines.com
12. newsvine.com
13. blinklist.com
14. netvouz.com
15. clipmarks.com
16. Furl.net
17. Mister-Wong
18. dzone.com
19. ma.gnolia.com
20. Tailrank.com
21. ShoutWire.com
22. simpy.com
23. BlogMarks.net
24. BlueDot.us
25. Spurl.net
26. Spotplex.com
27. linkswarm.com
28. Spotback.com
29. PlugIm.com
30. MyBookmarks.com

Facebook Demographics Slideshow

Forrester Research's Charlene Li has provided a Slideshare presentation on Facebook's demographics (found via Beth Kanter via Steve Rubel):

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I Want A Healthy Serving Of Statistics With My Social Networks

I live and die by statistics.

I use Google Analytics and Webmaster, Statcounter, Performancing Metrics, MyBlogLog, Feedburner, AddThis, ClickTracks and other for that very reason.

I've got great statistics for my web sites, blogs, and RSS feeds; so why can't I have them for my social networking and media sites?

The video sharing sites like Google Video and YouTube and Metacafe provide basic statistics on viewership for a given video. That's helpful but not enough. But at least it's better than the social networking sites, social media, and social bookmarking sites.

Most of these sites do not even have a function for adding code to your account and even if they do, as MySpace does, they do not allow you to add JavaScript code so that rules out using third party web analytics services such as Google Analytics to do the job. 

There are plenty of very good reasons to prohibit people from posting JavaScript code to their social sites, foremost among them the risk that someone will (and people will) post malicious code that will effect users who visit that page.

I understand. So instead, why can't the MySpaces and Facebooks, and LinkedIns, and Flickrs, and del.icio.uses and Twitters of the world give me those stats themselves.

I doesn't have to be anything fancy; the basics would do just fine: Number of unique visitor by hour, day, week, month and year, how they got to my page and where they came from, and if they used a search engine, which one did they use and what search phrase brought them to me.

That's all I ask. I might even be willing to pay a little for the service.

Right now, the only indicator of how highly trafficked your social media account is, are the number of friends or contacts you have or how many outside sites are linking to your page. But that doesn't count how many people are actually visiting your page. You could go out and find a bunch of friends but they may not ever visit your page again after the initial friend approval.

The volume of comments you get on your content is a better indicator of popularity and engagement with your page but that still offers no concrete numbers.

I want to know a lot more than that and I don't think I'm alone.

So here's a plea to the social networking and media sites please add some basic statistics to your services before some smart developer figures out a way to provide that service through a JavaScriptless widget.

Google Conversion University Video

Google does a great job at producing instructional and educational video. This one was released yesterday by the Google Analytics team and was shot at the first Google Conversion University event. Analytics is Google's free web site traffic statistics service. I love it; it's got amazing depth and sophistication that allows you to analyze in detail how people are arriving at and using your site. This video gives you a nice overview of the service:

See also:

• Google Analytics Video Tutorial

Google Analytics Outage Update

Google has at least confirmed that they're aware of the Analytics outage problem.

In a post to the Google Analytics blog, the assure that no data will be lost and they will resolve the problem as soon as possible.

Hispanics/Latinos Online

I've written before about the importance of identifying your audience and conducting market research to determine their attitudes and behavior before implementing any Internet marketing effort. Here's an example of what you can pull together with data that's freely available online:

Hispanic/Latino Americans Online Profile Summary

Hispanic Americans are increasingly going online; one third of them are 35 years of age or younger.  More than three-fourths of English speaking American Hispanics are online while only a third of Spanish-dominated Hispanic adults use the Internet. Only 43% of Hispanics born outside the US go online. Most US Hispanic Internet users are using a broadband connection. When they go online, they spend more time there than the general population.

While Hispanic Americans prefer Web sites in Spanish, it is essential for only a quarter of them. While most American Hispanic youth would like to see more Hispanics represented in the media, they are more likely to prefer English language media messages that are targeted at them than messages in Spanish.

Most US Hispanic Internet users believe the Internet is a great source for researching commercial products and services. A majority of US Hispanic video game enthusiasts (presumably preponderantly male) use the Internet for e-mail, instant messaging, and blogging. Yet US Hispanics in are less likely than the general population to use email.

American Hispanics' favorite Spanish-language portals are, in order, Yahoo Telemundo, MSN Latino, and AOL Latino. American Hispanics are more likely than the general population to visit music-related sites and more likely to watch online video. Most Hispanic Americans use Instant Messaging, share photos online, and read or post to blogs; more than a third use social networking sites and use a phone that is connected to the Internet.

Online Hispanic Americans are far more likely to own a mobile phone, a digital camera, or a video game console than the population in general. Online US Hispanics love to use their phones as communication devices beyond simple telephone calls. A majority of English-speaking American Hispanics use text-messaging and take photos on their phone. American Hispanics in general are far more likely than the general population to use text messaging and to take photos with their phone. They are three times more likely than non-Hispanic white to own a phone with a two-way "walkie talkie" feature.

Hispanic/Latino Americans Online - Size & Demographics

There were 16.7 million Hispanic Internet users in the United States in 2006, according to Department of Commerce 2003 projections. The number of users is expected to reach 20.9 million in 2010, approaching the number of African Americans online. An estimated 43 percent of the Hispanic population three years and older have access to the Internet in 2007. These data include both English and Spanish speakers. About one-third of American Hispanic Internet users are younger than 35 years old. People 24 and under represent 35% of all Hispanic online users, according to eMarketer's Hispanic Youth Online report.

According to a January 2006 comScore Media Metrix study, in 2005, there were 2.5 million Hispanic American Internet users between the ages of three and 17; there were three million Hispanic American Internet users between 18 and 24; and there were 3.6 million Hispanic American Internet users between 25 and 34 years of age.

According to a 2006 study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, among English-dominant Hispanics, 78% use the Internet. Among bilingual Hispanics, 76% use the Internet. Fewer than a third (32%) of Spanish-dominant Hispanic adults are Internet users. Among adult US Hispanic Internet users:

• 67% are 18-29 years old
• 61% are 30-41 years old
• 59% are 42-51 years old
• 42% are 52-60 years old
• 27% are 61-70 years old
• 17% are 71 years old or older

The Pew study shows that US Hispanics who are born outside the 50 states are less likely to go online. 76% of US Hispanics use the Internet compared with 43% of those who were born outside the US. Foreign-born Hispanics tend to be Spanish-dominant, bolstering the idea that language is a factor in Internet use.

Less than a third of anyone who did not graduate from high school use the Internet, regardless of ethnicity. Among Hispanics, 41% have not completed high school, according to the study. Hispanics from South America are most likely to be online (70%), while only 52% of Hispanics of Mexican descent use the Internet.

Among offline US Hispanics, the leading reasons for not using the Internet were:

• 53% did not have access
• 18% were not interested in Internet access
• 10% found going online too difficult or frustrating
• 6% said it was too expensive
• 5% said they were too busy or didn't have the time to go online

The "The AOL Latino 2006 Hispanic Cyberstudy" conducted by Synovate in September 2006 found that there are more than 16 million Hispanic Americans online, 55% of the total US Hispanic population. Of those online, 77% have broadband access.

According to Millie Carrasquillo of Telemundo, 80% of online Hispanics use broadband.

According to the "Chronicle" report by Mercanti Group, US Hispanic consumers have some of the largest disposable incomes of any minority group. Hispanic American buying power will grow to a projected $1.3 trillion in 2011, up from $838 billion in 2006.

Hispanic/Latino Americans' Consumer Attitudes & Media Consumption

According to a 2005 New American Dimensions survey on the attitudes of Hispanic American youths (14-29) toward the use of Spanish vs. English in media and marketing:

• 77% said that commercials needn't be in Spanish to address them as Hispanics
• 75% would like to see more Hispanic actors on English TV and in movies
• 69% would like to see more English-language television that is geared toward Hispanics
• 67% appreciate marketing that speaks to them as a bicultural Hispanic
• 63% would like more English-language commercials targeted at Hispanics
• 48% want more Spanish-language programming
• 40% want more Spanish-language commercials

According to the September 2006 "The AOL Latino 2006 Hispanic Cyberstudy" conducted by Synovate:

• 68% of Hispanic Internet users believe the Internet is the best source to make final purchase decisions on brands and products.
• 77% of Hispanic Internet users use the Internet to learn about brands and products.
• 72% use the Internet to compare product prices.

According to a July 2006 Roper Public Affairs study commissioned by AOL, US Hispanic Internet users believe the Internet is the best source of information for the following shopping activities:

• 74% think the Internet is the best source for finding out where the product they want to buy is available
• 69% think the Internet is the best source for learning about a product/service's available features and benefits
• 70% think the Internet is the best source for comparing prices
• 64% think the Internet is the best source for learning about available brands
• 63% think the Internet is the best source for advice on brands to buy

Hispanic Americans are more likely than Americans in general to say radio is the “most essential” media--24% vs. 17%''--according to recent research from Edison Media Research and Arbitron. They are also more likely than the general population to consider newspapers the least essential among major media, 40% vs. 30%. Hispanic Americans are more likely to consider the Internet the “most cool and exciting” medium--41% for Hispanics compared to 34% for the general population.

Hispanics are slightly more likely to tune in to radio for breaking news (14% vs. 10%) than the general population and they are more likely to listen to the radio while working: 52% vs. 44%.

Hispanic/Latino Americans' Lifestyle

According to BIGresearch's biannual survey, SIMM VII (Simultaneous Media Survey), of December 2005, among Hispanic Americans who chose video games as a leisure time activity they said they spend their free time in the following ways:

• 72.2% - Go to movies
• 72.9% - Listen to music
• 55.5% - Go shopping
• 52.4% - E-mail/instant messaging/blogging
• 42.1% - Play video games
• 41.5% - Go to amusement parks
• 25.7% - Camp/Fish/Hike/Hunt
• 35.1% - Exercise/jogging, etc.
• 32.3% - Go to bar/nightclub

Hispanic/Latino Americans' Technology Use

According to a November/December, 2006 study by Yahoo! Telemundo and Experian Simmons, online Hispanic Americans are far more likely to own a mobile phone, a digital camera, or a video game console than the population in general:

• 90% own a mobile phone compared to 79% among the general population
• 79% own a digital camera compared to 53% of the general population
• 66% own a video game console compared to 52% of the general population

According to a Telephia survey conducted in the first quarter of 2006, Hispanics made up only 10% of total wireless subscribers but 23% of mobile TV subscribers.

According to a Pew Internet & American Life Project April 2006 survey:

• 54% of English-speaking Hispanics send and receive text messages
• 56% of English-speaking Hispanics take pictures with their phone
• 40% of English-speaking Hispanics play games on their phone
• 29% of English-speaking Hispanics use the Internet on their phone
• 16% of English-speaking Hispanics play music on their phone

Hispanic Americans are are significantly more likely to own an iPod--24% vs. 18%--than Americans in general, according to research from Edison Media Research and Arbitron.

Hispanic/Latino Americans' Online Behavior

Half of Hispanic adults said that they are online at least monthly, up from 45% 2006, according to Forrester Research's "When to Build a Spanish-Language Web Site" report. A comScore Media Metrix study showed that Hispanics spent an average of 88.1 minutes online per day, while the general online population spent 81.7 minutes per day during December 2006.

According to a November/December, 2006 study by Yahoo! Telemundo and Experian Simmons, online Hispanic Americans are far more likely to take photos with their mobile phone and use text messaging than the population in general:

• 61% take photos with their mobile phone compared to 28% of the general population
• 66% use text messaging compared to 38% of the general population

A March 2006 comScore Media Metrix study found that the top growing category during the past year among Hispanics was Classifieds, which experienced a 51-percent jump in traffic to 3.1 million visitors. U.S. Hispanics also increased their visitation to categories related to the immigration issue. Traffic to online radio sites--many of which feature related news reports--saw a 40 percent increase to 3.5 million visitors in March. The Politics category also saw a traffic surge, reaching 460,000 visitors (up 33 percent). U.S. Hispanics showed greater interest in travel-related web content--perhaps as they planned to travel to immigration protests and rallies. Traffic to Hotels/Resorts sites jumped 32 percent to 2.5 million visitors, while Map sites increased by the same percentage to 5.6 million visitors.

Top Growing Categories Among U.S. Hispanics - March 2006 vs. March 2005:

• Classifieds - 54% growth
• Multimedia - 44% growth
• Radio - 40% growth
• Religion - 39% growth
• Online Trading - 36% growth
• Politics - 33% growth
• Hotels/Resorts - 32% growth
• Maps - 32% growth
• Pharmacy - 31% growth
• Sports - 31% growth

According to a May/June 2005 study by Solutions Research Group, 28% of Hispanic Americans have downloaded a ringtone to their phone; 52% of Hispanic Americans have sent or received a text message in the past month.

According to a July 2005 Yankelovich Monitor study, 16% of Hispanic Americans 16 or older own a cell phone with Internet access while 15% said they planned to buy one in the next 12 months. Sprint is the most popular service provider among Hispanic mobile phone subscribers, possibly due to the popularity of Nextel's "walkie-talkie" two-way radios among Hispanics. According to Yankelovich data from September 2005, Hispanic phone buyers are three-times as likely as non-Hispanic whites to own a two-way, and more than three times more likely to intend to purchase one. Sprint acquired Nextel in early 2005.

According to a Compete Inc. study, Hispanic shoppers are more likely to look online for music-enabled phones than other shoppers and Hispanic mobile phone users are more likely to purchase downloadable content for their phones, like ring- and ring-back and graphics.

BIGresearch's December 2005 Simultaneous Media Survey (SIMM VII) reported that Yahoo (telemundo.yahoo.com) has greatest percentage of Hispanic users with 13.8 percent, followed by MSN (latino.msn.com) with 8.8 percent and AOL (latino.aol.com) with 7.8 percent.

A December 2005 Forrester Research study found that Hispanic Americans are twice as likely (41%) as the rest of the population (18%) to visit online music sites. Hispanic American adults are also more likely to watch video online (23%) than the general population (17%).

But the Forrester study also found that Hispanic Americans are less likely to use e-mail, with just 61% sending and receiving messages, compared with 97% of other Americans.

A slim majority of online Hispanic-Americans prefer to be offered Spanish-language Web sites, according to Forrester Research's "When to Build a Spanish-Language Web Site" report. A quarter of online Hispanic-Americans said that Web sites they visit must be in Spanish.

A September 2005 Yankelovich Monitor study found:

• 39% of Hispanic Americans research products online before buying, compared to 39% of African Americans who do and 48% of non-Hispanic whites who do.
• 29% of Hispanic Americans purchase products or services online, compared to 32% of African Americans who do and 40% of non-Hispanic whites who do.
• 26% of Hispanic Americans purchase airline tickets online, compared to 27% of African Americans who do and 33% of non-Hispanic whites who do.
• 20% of Hispanic Americans bid on items at auction sites like eBay, compared to 18% of African Americans who do and 24% of non-Hispanic whites who do.
• 9% of Hispanic Americans sell items at auction sites like eBay, compared to 12% of African Americans who do and 10% of non-Hispanic whites who do.

According to a September 2005 Feedback Research study, 54% of US Spanish-speaking Internet users had purchased something online, while 45% said that their use of the Internet for shopping and/or purchasing products or services would increase over the next year. American Spanish-speaking online shoppers more likely to use portals (53% compared to 35%) and 69% favored Spanish language sites when shopping online; 49% said they were more likely to buy a product from a Spanish language site.

According to the September 2006 "The AOL Latino 2006 Hispanic Cyberstudy" conducted by Synovate 48% of online Hispanic Americans visit news sites (music, weather, health and travel Web sites are also popular). Additionally:

• 68% of online Hispanic Americans use instant messaging
• 63% of online Hispanic Americans share photos online
• 52% of online Hispanic Americans read or post to blogs
• 43% of online Hispanic Americans visit social networking sites
• 40% of online Hispanic Americans talk on a phone using the Internet

Know Your Audience - Online Market Research

Before beginning any Internet marketing project or campaign it is crucial that define your audiences.

Whether you're building a web site, creating an email newsletter, setting up shop on a social network, or conducting online PR, your efforts are far more likely to fail if you haven't identified and defined who will be the recipient of your message(s).

Your first step, then, for any Internet marketing effort will be identifying the audience(s) you want to target and your second step will be researching those audiences.

You'll want to create a profile of who those audiences are; not just their demographics, but what technology they use, how they consume information, what is their online behavior? The results of your research should be applied to your Internet marketing efforts.

Let's say, for instance, that your audience are heavy users of instant messaging; you'd want to make it easy for them to share your content with their buddies list. If your audience loves to watch online video, then you should set up shop on YouTube and the other video sharing sites. You get the idea.

There are plenty of market research firms you can hire to help you define your targeted audiences and you can buy market research reports online. But if you haven't got much of a budget for market research, fortunately there are a lot of free sources of research online that you can tap for your own research.

Here's a list to help get you started:

• KnowThis - An excellent marketing research portal.
• Pew Internet & American Life Project - They conduct frequent and detailed surveys that are especially helpful in determining online behavior and technology use.
• BurstMedia's Online Insights archive - PDFs of their online behavior research.
• HitWise Datacenter - Great data and great bloggers.
• BIGresearch - Their News section includes press releases with data highlights of their studies.
• Marketing Charts - Marketing data in chart form.
• comScore  - Their Press Center section includes press releases with data highlights of their studies.

Valentine's Day Text Messaging

The top five online dating sites ranked by visitors, according to a February 2007 comScore World Metrix report, are 1) Yahoo Personals, 2) Match.com sites, 3) True.com, 4) Spark Networks, and 5) SinglesNet.com.

According to a February 2007 International Communications Research survey of US adult cell phone users, 33 percent of the respondents said that they have communicated with their date or mate via text messaging in 2007, an increase of 6 percent over last year. Twenty eight percent of users say that they use text messaging to flirt. Some more interesting stats:

• 17% say a cell phone has saved them from an uncomfortable date
• 12% have used text messaging news as a conversation starter with a date or mate
• 8% have ended a relationship over rude or offensive cell behavior (driving, perhaps?)
• 5% have called someone else they were interested in from a cell phone while on a date, and 7% reported that their date had done so
• 6% have judged a prospective date by the phone they use

Study: Small Bloggers

Figures. As I was buried deep in writing my Online Political Advertising post yesterday, which discussed the important role of bloggers in diseminating political ideas, The Pew Internet & American Life Project released the results of a survey of bloggers that reinforces some of the points yesterday's post. It also is the first study to take a look at long-tail bloggers whose audience is only a handful of family and friends.

The New York Times quoted the director of the project, Lee Rainie, in today's paper:

“This is a decent portrait of the long tail of the blogosphere. These are the average, everyday folks who blog. They are different from the A-list bloggers who get so much media attention. This is the first attempt or one of the first attempts at a representative sample of bloggers.”

Also from that story:

Among the report’s findings was that while many well-known blogs are political in nature, 37 percent of bloggers use them as personal journals. Among other popular topics were politics and government (11 percent), entertainment (7 percent), sports (6 percent) and general news and current events (5 percent). Only 34 percent of bloggers considered blogging a form of journalism, and most were heavy Internet users.

Finally, the survey also interestingly found that bloggers are less white than the general Internet population. Sixty percent of bloggers are are white compared to 74 percent of the Internet; 11 percent are African-American, 19 percent are Hispanics who speak English, and 10 percent are members of another race.

The Numbers Behind Joe Mauer's Rising Star

Minnesota Twins starting catcher Joe Mauer currently sits atop Major League Baseball's hitting leaderboard with a .392 batting average. A former Twin, Hall of Famer Rod Carew flirted with a .400 batting average toward the end of his amazing 1977 season when he ended with a .388 average, which is the closest anyone has come to Ted Williams' record season average of .406 in 1941.

That's how hot Joe Mauer and his .392 average is right now. There's every reason to believe he could maintain that type of production in the second half of the season, considering that he's been a steady rather than streaky hitter.

We've been charting the online buzz Joe Mauer is creating for our client, Quickswing, and the data gives an interesting glimpse into how search traffic and Internet buzz surges and wanes with events.

Joe Mauer Search Queries

As a small market team in a division that has been dominated by the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers the past few seasons, the Twins don't garner a lot of attention. Joe Mauer's national awareness suffers as a result. Couple that with the fact that he was injured for much of his rookie season and had a good but not astounding full season last year, and it should come as no surprise that the volume of "Joe Mauer" related searches should be relatively modest. The following Google Trends chart shows Joe Mauer searches from 2003 to 2006:

You can see that the Joe Mauer search history has thus far been one of spikes and flatlines. That first spike was no media coverage of the Twins picking him first overall in the MLB draft. But, as you can tell from the 2006 data, he's starting to garner a lot of attention. During the past 90 days, there were 364 Joe Mauer-related searches, according to Wordtracker data. The following Google Trends chart shows Joe Mauer searches for January through June, 2006:

Though Joe Mauer related search volume is gaining, the real buzz is happening in the blogosphere and it has really taken off during the past few days as Mauer's batting average approaches .400. The following Technorati chart shows "Joe Mauer" blog mentions from May 31 to June 29, 2006:

Online Video Usage

The growing popularity of online video has been pretty obvious to me for a while, but now we have confirmation from comScore's new Online Video Metrix service. That fact alone--that they felt compelled to offer an online video measuring service--should speak volumes.

But they offer the statistics and demographics of online video use, as well:

• The number of people who watch video online grew 18% between October 2005 and March 2006.
• In March, Americans streamed video 3.7 billion times.
• On average, they watched 100 minutes of video each month; that compares with 85 minutes in October.
• Men accounted for 52% of those streams and women 48%.
• Men averaged  two hours of video viewing a month while women averaged an hour and twenty mintues.
• Men between 18 and 24 years of age were the most voracious video viewers, averaging 140 minutes of online video viewing.
• 16% of video consumption occurs during prime time and 22% occurs on the weekend.
• 42% watch video from an entertainment site and about 33% watch it from a portal.
• People spend about an hour a month watching video at work.

“Video consumption on the Web is rapidly approaching the tipping point for advertisers,” said Peter Daboll, president and CEO of comScore Media Metrix. “With two-thirds of consumers accessing the Internet from home using a broadband connection, and publishers continuing to innovate by using the latest technologies to deliver content in a way that engages users, video consumption is poised to become a standard part of the online experience for a majority of consumers. Advertisers will increasingly seek opportunities to reach broad and frequently elusive markets, and do so with a level of engagement and richness that has not previously been available online.”

Technorati tags: online video use | internet video usage | online video demographics | online video statistics | internet video marketing | online video marketing

Map Of Religious Denominations In The US

We hear a lot about values and faith-based communities but usually it is in a polarized political context, so it's easy to tune it out. But there's no denying that one's religious outlook informs much of how a person views any other issue. It is important, therefore, for marketers to understand the religious context within which they are marketing.

For a course called American Ethinic Geography at Valparaiso University  Professor Jon T. Kilpinen provides a map gallery that illustrated the "cultural mosaic" of the United States by overlaying population density data for different groups by geographic region. There are maps for ethnic groups, cultural regions, religion, language, politics, and socio-economics.

The maps are a fantastic tool for anyone who wants to understand the geographic region within which they are marketing.

Or the political landscape. For example, the map showing the distribution of members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America helps to explain North Dakota's legislature's recent bill outlawing abortion.

These maps are fascinating for anyone interested in the demographics of the United States but they are also an invaluable marketing tool.

Technorati tags: demographics | demographic maps

YouTube Popularity

Steve Rubel at Micro Persuasion has a nice Alexa graph in his post today about E! Entertainment partnering with the video sharing site.

The graph perfectly illustrates the explosive growth of YouTube by comparing their traffic to nbc.com, cbs.com, and eonline.com during the past three months.

You are missing a huge video marketing opportunity if you are not putting your video assets online.

Technorati tags: steve rubel | micro persuasion | alexa | e entertainment | youtube | nbc.com | cbs.com | eonline.com | video | video sharing | viral video | video marketing

Online Research, Offline Purchase

The results of an iProspect survey of online consumers [PDF] during the 2005 holiday season released last month show that 47% of respondents who researched a product online then bought that product offline. This a strong argument for bricks and mortor merchants to include a store-finding feature on their web site.

Conversely, 53% of respondents who researched a product online did not follow through by buying online. It would've been nice to know why.

These results obviously  suggest that merchants should think of ways they can track feet on the floor to determine ROI on their online marketing efforts. It's a tricky problem because there are no elegant solutions to address it.

The study also found that price comparison sites such as Froogle have yet to really take off. The web sites American Internet users used for researching products they bought, online or off, were:

• The merchant's site, 63%
• A search engine, 62%
• The manufacturer's site, 30%
• A shopping search engine or comparison site, 26%
• Other, 14%

This data makes clear that it is crucial that a merchant's web site have high visibility in the general search engines through either online advertising or through natural search engine marketing so consumers can find the merchant site for their research needs.

Technorati tags: online product research | internet product research | search engine marketing |  sem | search engine advertising | online advertising | froogle | price comparison engine

Valentine's Day Consumer Attitudes

Gender Differences On Valentine's Day

Yeah, I know, Valentine's Day is over, get on with it, already! Indulge me one last time and file this away for next year's Valentine's Day sales season.

The comparison shopping engine Shopzilla released the results of a survey conducted on their behalf by Bizrate Research of 981 online buyers that shows, not surprisingly, that lonely women get more depressed than married women on Valentine's Day. Big surprise, huh?  The only thing here is that I don't believe anyone every tried to measure it before.

Thirty-five precent of widowed women get depressed on Valentine's Day; 25% of single women and 25% of divorced or separated women do; and only 13% of married women get depressed on Valentine's Day.

The survey explains that Valentine's Day depresses many women because they consider themselves more romantic than men (73% versus 64%), and that the holiday is more important to them (85%) than it is to men (73%). Nealry all women (90%) think that romance is at least moderately important on Valentine's Day and 71% say that their expectations have been let down on the holiday. Twenty-five percent of  women have been dissatisfied with their significant other's Valentine's Day gift.

Seventy-eight percent of women would feel comfortable buying themselves a Valentine's Day gift if there were single compared to only 57% of men who would do so; forty percent of women say they have bought themselves a Valentine's Day gift while only 12% of men have.

Purchasing Behavior & Gift Preferences

A Discovery Card Valentine's Day Shopping Survey finds that men will outspend (averaging $127) women (averaging $74) on Valentine's Day gifts. Women's lower spending is partly explained by the fact that 40% said that coupons/rebates would play a role in their Valentine's Day shopping decisions, compared to only 35% of men who would take bargains into consideration.

Most men (71%) planned on giving their significant other a night out on Valentine's Day while 66% planned to give flowers. Conversely, most women (53%) planned on buying entertainment products for their men.

Sixty-two percent of both men and women hoped to receive a night out on the town from their significant other. That's where they part ways in preferred gifts. Men want entertainment products (45%) and candy (26%) while women want flowers (55%) and jewelry (44%).

The Discovery Card survey also found:

• Most people (65%) will make their purchase a week in advance of Valentine's Day but one in ten men will wait until February 14.
• More than a third of women (39%) planned on spending nothing on their significant others for the holiday.
• 22% of men and 15% of women planned to buy their Valentine's Day gift online.
• 53% of both men and women said they'd use a debit or credit card to buy their Valentine's Day gifts.

Technorati tags: valentine's day | valentine | gifts | ecommerce | consumer behavior | consumer insights | surveys

College Students Shopping Online

Late last month, Experience, Inc., a career services provider, released the results of a survey of college-educated 18 to 34 year-olds' online shopping behavior. Experience claims that 18 to 34 year-olds are responsible for $175 billion in annual consumer spending.

The survey found that 98% of college students have bought a product or service online.

They conduct online research before buying:

• Less than one hour of research: 27%
• 1-2 hours of research: 53%
• 3-5 hours of research: 17%
• Six or more hours of research: 3%

The report states that "Because college students spend a significant amount of time online researching products and services before purchasing, when they do purchase, they do it online."

Perhaps. It would be interesting to know what they were buying online. I'd be wiling to bet that college students are primarily small ticket buyers online: Books, music, web site subscriptions, etc., and that might explain why most spend little time doing online research. It doesn't take a lot of research to determine if you want to buy a book or some music.

I'd also be willing to bet that there's a strong correlation between the amount of time spent researching a product online and the price of the product. That is, people will conduct much more thorough and extensive research for a big-ticket item such as a car or an HDTV and that the larger the price, the less likely they will be to buy the item online.

The report also states that 18 to 34 year-olds respond to online advertising. More than 50% said they have bought a product or service based on an online ad and 34% said Internet ads were the most influential way to motivate them to learn more about a product or service.

What types of online ads will most appeal to this group?

1. Sponsored link related to the content they are reading, 41%
2. A contest or promotion offering value, 34%
3. Personalization based on their pofile or online behavior, 17%

Technorati tags: college students | online advertising | internet advertising | online shopping | ecommerce | online sales | online research | online behavior

Valentine's Day Sales

Constant Contact's survey of business owners, "2006 Small Business Valentine's Day Outlook," shows that most respondents feeling rosy about the Valentine's Day sales season:  55%  expected strong sales  leading up to February 14th, while 71% were expecting healthy online sales. Fifty-one percent said that Valentine's Day was an important holiday for their business.

Seventy percent planned on promoting Valentine's Day offers through the following methods:

1. Email markeing, 76%
2. Online marketing, 49%
3. Direct mail, 25%
4. Flyers, 25%
5. Advertising (TV/Radio/Newspaper), 16%

Thirty-two percent of small business owners expected customers to spend less than $25 on Valentine's Day gifts; 35% expected them to spend between $25 and $50; 14% expected customers to spend between $50 and $75; 9% expected them to spend between $75 and $100; and 10% expected customers to spend more than $100.

Small business owners believed that flowers would be by far the most popular gift bought by their customers:

1. Flowers, 59%
2. Jewelry, 21%
3. Chocolates, 16%
4. Clothing, 4%