In that post, we mentioned a study by TargetCast tcm that Marketing Charts featured, the results of which suggested that men are more likely to ditch traditional media in favor of digital. According to the consumer trend study, “men are more likely than women to say that the Internet has replaced their need to read printed newspapers and magazines, and also more likely to be willing to pay for a subscription to an online newspaper or for a service to watch online TV with limited ads.”

Perhaps it’s this study that Hulu’s banking on to keep its business model alive when it goes green (as in pay-per-view) next year. But we digress.

The study goes on to detail how engagement in both traditional and digital media differs by gender as well. “Overall, men generally are more willing than women to adapt their usage habits to incorporate more digital and online platforms as replacements for traditional media,” claims the article on MarketingCharts.com. “In addition to increased willingness to trade in traditional newspapers, magazines and TV for digital, 34% of men – compared with just 23% of women – say radio is not as relevant to them today because there are so many other sources for music.”

The difference, however, is not limited to gender. There’s an age gap also – specifically between ages 18 to 34 and 35 and older. The study reveals that:

• Adults ages 18-34 are more likely to have replaced newspapers and magazines with internet content, while adults older than 25 are more likely to consider magazines and newspapers as valuable sources of information.
• Adults ages 18-24 are more likely to say radio is not as relevant and that they prefer reading magazines online. This age group also indicates they don’t mind watching ads when watching TV programs online.
• Adults aged 18-34 are more likely than other consumer groups to consider advertising on the internet influential in their purchase decisions.

See both charts after the jump.

The study surveyed 895 adults between ages 18 and 64 in September of this year. The goal was to observe current and projected consumer attitudes, perceptions and usage of mass media relative to reported past and future behavior.

What do you think? Do you agree with the TargetCast tcm survey? Do you feel like men are more likely to move from traditional media to digital media faster than women? Or do you think that we’re all changing our media consumption habits at the same rate? And what does the future hold for traditional media – is it on its way out all together? Let us know what you think below.

No related posts.

The study says that there are class differences among users of social networks – particularly Facebook and MySpace. Wealthier people are 25% more likely to use the former, while the less affluent are 37% more likely to cling to the latter.

More specifically, the research found that “almost 23 percent of Facebook users earn more than $100,000 a year, compared to slightly more than 16% of MySpace users. On the other end of the spectrum, 37 percent of MySpace members earn less than $50,000 annually, compared with about 28% of Facebook users.”

MySpace users tend to be “in middle-class, blue-collar neighborhoods,” said Mike Mancini, vice president of data product management for Nielsen, which used an online panel of more than 200,000 social media users in the United States in August. “They’re on their way up, or perhaps not college educated.”

LinkedIn and Twitter were also part of the study – and the two skew even higher among affluent users.

Nearly 38% of LinkedIn users earn more than $100,000 a year, and there’s a strong overlap between Facebook and LinkedIn users.

There are lots of theories – scientific and otherwise – about the results of Nielsen Claritas study in this article on CNN.com.

But we want to know your take on this issue. Why do you think the less affluent are more apt than the affluent to use MySpace – and vice versa? What is it about these social networking sites that seemingly separates us by the amount of money we make?

Fundamentally, why do you think people (in general) have made the move to Facebook from MySpace. And why are the less affluent still pledging their proverbial allegiance to the fading portal?

Related posts:

1. The Theory of Social Media Marketing Evolution
2. Primer on Social Media Marketing (Part 1)
3. What Happens When Your Future Boss Finds You Online?

Of course, we don’t make that data up. No, we use sources such as eMarketer, MarketingProfs and other research entities that compile information that allow us to draw conclusions and provide our two cents on various topics on advertising and marketing across channels but especially online.

Unless you’re a subscriber to these services, however, you may not have access to all the information they hold. Information that can help you when planning your own marketing campaigns or campaigns for clients.

A great resource that we’ve found – which is available to everyone – is MarketingCharts, charts and data for marketers in Web and Excel formats.

The available info is as current as you can get, with some charts revealing the top 10 Web sites in various categories for September 2009, among many other interesting articles such as “Men More Likely to Ditch Traditional Media for Digital.”

More on that later. But for now, check out MarketingCharts and find a way to make it work for you.

Related posts:

1. The Rich Don't Always Get Richer
2. Is Inbound Marketing the Dawn of a New Era?
3. 'Coupon' Codes Can Lead to Conversions

There was a minor debate over the validity of the statistics, because the video was produced as a marketing piece by an author who’s selling a book on the same subject.

This video from The Economist, however – from its periodic series “Did you know?” – shouldn’t leave much room for argument. The Economist is nothing if not reputable – and this video contains up-to-the-minute info on where we’re headed in this digital revolution. Truly exciting stuff!

Watch the video after the jump.

Related posts:

1. 10,001 Winners: Staples Scores With Clever Viral Campaign
2. Is Social Networking Separated by Social Class?
3. Explaining Facebook

While these two browsers are the most popular, there are several others – including Opera, Chrome and Safari – which begs the question, is there room for anybody else?

Of course there is, but getting people to switch browsers is a difficult task. Nonetheless it’s a challenge that Flock, which launched version 2.5 in May, is prepared to take on.

Built on Mozilla’s Firefox codebase, Flock specializes in social networking and Web 2.0 facilities, integrating the most popular social networking platforms – MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, Blogger, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and much more – into its service. Why will this matter to the Internet- and social-network-using public? Simple. The keyword here is “integrating.” When logging into any of the supported social services, Flock can track updates from friends: profiles, uploaded photos, and more, and Flock’s latest 2.5 version added Twiter Search functionality, multi-casting of status updates to multiple services, and the introduction of instant messaging via Facebook Chat in the browser. It’s an all-in-one – and it’s about time.

According to Wikipedia, Flock has a ton of other attractive features, like:

• native sharing of text, links, photos and videos;
• a “Media Bar” showing preview of online videos and photos as well as subscription to photo and video feeds;
• a feed reader supporting Atom, RSS and Media RSS feeds;
• a blog editor and reader, allowing direct posting into any designated blog;
• a Webkit-mail component allowing users to check supported web-based e-mail off site, compose new messages, and drag and drop pictures and videos from the “Media Bar” or webclipboard into a new email message;
• support for third party add-ons, including a number of Firefix extensions.

Since its beta debut two years ago, Flock has been well-received by the industry (in February 2008, AOL announced that it would discontinue support for the Netscape browser – so long, sucka! – and recommended Flock and Firefox as alternative browsers to its userbase of Netscape 9 users), and Flock has consistently won awards, most notably a Webby Award in social networking in 2008.

In March 2008, Flock announced that they had seen “nearly 3 million downloads” and a 135% percent increase in active users in the first two months of 2008. They also announced “more than 70 percent of Flock users making it their default browser of choice.”

But in the grand scope of Internet usage, where new browsers and updated versions of existing browsers come and go like the tide, Flock has yet to really make a splash. In fact, we’re betting you’ve probably never heard of Flock – as least not in the context of actually using it. Which is a shame, because if Flock aims for anything it’s making your life online more convenient by centralizing all your Web connections.

Still, it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks; we just hope this trick has a chance to sizzle before it fizzles.

Related posts:

1. Primer on Social Media Marketing (Part 1)
2. Orkut: Not as Popular as Myspace or Facebook, but Still Worth Your Time
3. Social Networking and Your Commander-in-Chief, Barack Obama

polls, LinkedIn, Roadblocks to success

No related posts.

Many recipients either unsubscribe or simply stop reading emails from online marketers. Year-after-year, in-box clutter has been the number one reason people resist emails, but this year, things have been turned on their head. A 2008 study from Marketingsherpa’s email summit in Miami has determined that in-box clutter is not the biggest problem – the problem is relevance.

58% of those surveyed said the number one reason they opted out of or unsubscribed from an email was because the email was not relevant to them; 44% said it was because they received too many emails from a particular sender; and only 31% said it was because of in-box clutter.

Good News For Email Marketers

It is good news that relevance is the reason people are opting out of emails, because unlike in-box clutter, this is something we as email marketers can control. It is more important than ever for your campaigns’ to immediately strike a chord with your customers. Marketers need to identify the absolute best products/offers they can send out. Copy and design need to work seamlessly together from subject headline to layout to entice customers to open.

The chart plays an optimistic beat for online marketing – it asserts that you are in control of the effectiveness your emails have on your customers. There will always be recipients who opt out, but good online marketing practices can limit and decrease these numbers.

Related posts:

1. How to Work Around the New Definition of Spam
2. The Online Marketing Cash Funnel
3. The Best and Worst Online B2C Practices to Boost ROI in 2009

In my weekly look at browser statistics (thank you, StatCounter), I was pleased to see that the combination of IE 8 and Firefox’s growth has finally taken over Internet Explorer 7′s dominance. As of today, June 15, 2009, at 11:20 a.m. EST, Firefox 3.0 has 32.09% of the browser market, with IE 7, for the first time ever, dipping below Firefox ever so slightly and coming in at 32.05%. These numbers are for the North American marketplace.

UPDATE: I was wrong. Well, only partially. At the time I wrote this post Firefox 3.0 hadn’t surpassed IE7. But that’s because it was still morning. However, it is worth noting that Firefox is VERY close. See the graph after the jump to see what the day of deliverance will look like.
Sorry for the false excitement!

IE 7, IE 8, Firefox 3.0, Browser statistics, statcounter, north america

No related posts.

I’ve played around with it a bit, watching its video tutorials (probably the weakest part of the launch, actually), and searching, you know, for things.  I have to admit, it’s pretty cool.  I’ll write more after more testing, and figuring out how it’s going to shake up the online marketing world.  But in the meantime, here’s something that can’t be ignored: Bing has overtaken Yahoo! and holds more of the market than MSN and Windows Live did, combined.  Pretty impressive.

Have you tried it?  What do you think?

Microsoft, Bing, search engines

Related posts:

1. Coffee Break: Google, Google, Gmail, Bing Vs. Google, Blogs on Paper, and Michael Jackson doesn't crash the Internet
2. A Primer on Mobile Web Advertising (Part 2)
3. Gemini Division Wants You to Buy Microsoft

Not everyone is singing Wolfram Alpha’s praises, however. This article on PCWorld.com by 49.96-year-old writer David Coursey, posted earlier today – when Wolfram Alpha officially launched – suggests that the engine may not be the “cyber wonderbrain” some might have expected.

Still, it’s pretty remarkable. And unless you have a tiny clone of Albert Einstein tucked away in your pocket protector, it will likely be useful at one point or another.

As an example, we’re picked a random date in time – June 17, 1984. When we entered that date into Wolfram Alpha, this is what we got:

What you’re unable to see – mostly because Apple’s screen-capture technology is primitive! – are the times for sunrise and sunset on that day and the exact hours of daylight. Pretty incredible, right?

If you think that’s neat, take a look at this – June 17, 2084.

It’s like Google, Jetsons-style.

And there are toooons of other nerdy things it can do. Enter any town and Wolfram provides the current local time, the city population, current weather conditions, it’s approximate elevation, and nearby larger cities. You can also plug in and compare stocks, find chemical compounds, conduct virtual physics experiments, and receive an answer to any calculation or math formula.

Long division, we will conquer you!

Related posts:

1. More Global Internet Statistics Coming Your Way
2. Style.com Adds Juice to Apple's iPhone With Couture and More
3. Everybody Needs to Cuil Out