Internet User Demographics in Canada
Who is online?
Based on active Internet usage in Canada in April 2008, comScore found the online audience evenly divided between males and females, with very slight variations in the age breakdown between the two groups.
Of the 50.2% of Web users who were male, according to comScore, just over one in five (10.2% of all users) were ages 2 to 17. The next-largest group was the 35-to-44-year-olds, representing just under 10% of all male users.
Female Internet users displayed a nearly identical pattern of usage by age distribution.
Overall, Internet use skews high in the youth demographic. Statistics Canada (StatCan) data indicates that in 2007, 93% of people in Canada ages 16 to 34 went online, while the access rate among those ages 65 and older was only 29%.
This is roughly the same pattern seen in comScore data, where Internet users in Canada ages 2 to 17 outnumber the 65 and older age group by more than 3-to-1, and those ages 18 to 24 outnumber online seniors by more than 2-to-1.
Adults and teens seem to use the Internet rather differently, as well.
An online survey by Ipsos Reid found that Internet users in Canada ages 12 to 17 spent an average of 13 hours per week online in early 2008 (compared with 19 hours for adults). That number has not increased since Ipsos began measuring online teen behavior in 2004.
Read more - eMarketer
Internet Users Read with a Grain of Salt
Professional sites well-trusted, others less so
The online population in the US is becoming increasingly skeptical. Internet users trust information posted online less now than eight years ago, according to the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future.
The organization recently released data on surveys from the past five years and said that, although Internet users in the US have grown more trusting of Web sites managed by professional news organizations, almost no one takes at face value all of the information posted by individuals.
The findings provide a longer-term view than those released in December 2007 by The Conference Board and TNS. Those groups found that overall user trust and satisfaction in the Internet varied by quarter, but was generally stable from Q4 2006 to Q4 2007. Respondents were not asked to compare information on professional news sites to information posted by individuals.
Read more - eMarketer
Internet Use Still Heaviest Among Young
The gap between time spent online and watching TV is closing
Adult consumers in the US still spend more time in front of televisions than they do online, according to a recently released survey sponsored by the Television Bureau of Advertising (TVB) industry association and conducted by Nielsen Media Research.
Survey respondents ages 18 to 34 spent over an hour per day more watching TV than on the Internet. The gap between time spent online and time spent watching TV is closing, however.
In January 2008, TVB found that 18 to 34 year-olds spent 60.6 minutes more watching TV per day (206.0 minutes) than they did online (145.4 minutes). That is down from June 2006, when the gap was 137.4 minutes: 246.7 minutes for TV and 109.3 minutes online. Moreover, TV time decreased while Internet time increased.
Read more - eMarketer
Say Hello to 824 Million Cybernauts
As of January 2008, the US accounted for 21% of Internet users worldwide, or 173 million Internet users according to comScore. This figure does not include users accessing the Internet from public computers or mobile phones.
While growth in the Internet audience has slowed in the US and other developed countries, it has accelerated in other regions of the world, particularly Asia-Pacific and Eastern Europe
Asia-Pacific is the region with the largest online population. In 2008, there were 309 million Internet users in the region, which was a 14% increase over 2007.
Europe is the second-largest region, with 233 million Internet users as of January 2008, though that was an increase of only 6.8% over 2007.
The online populations in Latin America and Africa/Middle East are also growing quickly, rising in Jamuary 2008 by 16.6% and 20% respectively. However, these two regions represent a small portion of total Internet users, with just 59 and 40 million Internet users respectively.
Overall, comScore says there were 824 million Internet users worldwide in January 2008. [eMarketer]
500 Million Internet Users in Asia-Pacific
By Ben Macklin, Senior Analyst
According to recent estimates there were 6.6 billion people in the world in 2007. Of that number, 1.15 billion, or 17.5%, were regular Internet users. By 2012, eMarketer projects that over 1.7 billion people worldwide (24.5%) will access the Internet at least once per month.
This year will see China overtake the United States as the most populous Internet nation in the world and the Asia-Pacific region will top 500 million Internet users.
By 2012, nearly 50% of the world’s Internet population will live in the Asia-Pacific region. The share of the world’s Internet users in Europe and North America will fall, though absolute numbers will continue to rise in both regions, as the share of users in Latin America and the Asia-Pacific region both grow.
The Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries lead the world in terms of Internet penetration, and reached something of a saturation point around 80% of the population in 2007.
Countries such as China, Russia, India, Brazil and Mexico are relatively immature Internet markets and will be the primary drivers for worldwide Internet user growth over the next five years.
Read more - eMarketer
Asians Research Gadgets Online
The Internet was cited as the most important source of information, particularly for information about consumer electronics, according to a survey of 10,000 MSN/ Windows Live service users in Asia, conducted by Synovate.
The study, commissioned by Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions, found 86% of respondents use the Internet to research consumer electronics. Newspapers and word of mouth were far behind, used by only 37%.
The products most often researched were mobile phones, followed by digital cameras, laptops and televisions.
These consumers plan to spend an average $1,800 on electronics in the next 12 months. A quarter of those surveyed had purchased a consumer electronics device in the past 12 months and 35% planned on buying one online in the next 12 months.
“Today, instead of making a trip to the mall for product guidance, or settling for a product choice based on limited reviews from family and friends – smarter consumers are conducting research on their own online, where a multitude of product comparisons, reviews and recommendations are freely available,” said Celia Fan, media analyst at Synovate. [eMarketer]
Just How Dominant Is MySpace?
Facebook might not be such a distant second.
Although Facebook has come on strong in recent months, MySpace averaged more than three-quarters of all US visits in 2007 among the top social networking Web sites, according to Hitwise. The site received 72% of US visits to social networks in December 2007 alone.
Overall visits to a group of 53 leading social network sites were up 4% year over year, and the top sites are becoming a mainstay of many Internet users' routines.
“The continued popularity of social networking activities online will drive the interest of marketers seeking to target influential users to approve and advocate their products and services," said Heather Dougherty, director of research at Hitwise.
Facebook increased its market share of visits to more than 16% in December 2007, from 10.59% in December 2006. The Hitwise data indicated that users still spent more time at MySpace than at other social networking sites in December 2007. Yet time spent there was actually down from the previous December. At the same time, time spent per visitor at Facebook doubled.
Read more - eMarketer
Teens Primed for Mobile Social Networks
After-school trend: MySpace, by phone. 
More than six in 10 teens have mobile phones, according to a December 2006 study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project titled "Teens and Social Media."
Pew found that nearly three-quarters of teens have desktop-computer access, making them a tech-savvy demographic.
A majority of teen Internet users surveyed visited entertainment and news sites, used instant messaging and watched online video. More than half also used social networking sites.
Access to social networks and cell phones has opened up new channels for today's teens," said Mary Madden, senior research specialist at Pew.
"New technology increases the overall intensity and frequency of their communication with friends, with e-mail being the one glaringly uncool exception in their eyes," Madden said.
Teens are a fast-growing social networking user group. In 2007, 70% used social networks at least once a month. eMarketer projects that number will grow to 84% in 2011.
Read more - eMarketer
Higher E-Mail Ad Spending Hits Hurdles
Subscribers wary of marketing creep.
US spending on e-mail advertising will grow to $2 billion by 2012 from $1.2 billion in 2007, according to JupiterResearch data presented at MediaPost's E-mail Insider Summit.
JupiterResearch estimated that about one-quarter of e-mail delivered to users' main inboxes is now opt-in.
"There's less junk, but there's still as much email -- we're competing with other legitimate marketers," said David Daniels, vice president of JupiterResearch, speaking to the e-mail marketers in the audience.
JupiterResearch asked why recipients stopped subscribing to opt-in e-mails. More than one-half said the content was no longer relevant, and 40% said they were getting too many offers.
It is also getting harder for marketers to figure out which e-mail address to use. Nearly two-thirds of US Internet users have three or more active e-mail addresses, according to a November 2006 Bluestreak-commissioned study conducted by ROI Research.
Read more - eMarketer
More Indians Online, Over 1 Billion To Go
The number of Internet users in India grew to 46 million in September 2007, up from 32.2 million in September 2006, according to the "Internet in India [I Cube] Report 2007," published by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB International.
In a country of more than 1.1 billion, that means there is still a long way to go. Subho Ray, president of the IAMAI.
Increased computer literacy is driving user growth, the groups said. The number of people who knew how to use a computer unaided was 65 million as of September 2007, versus 15.8 million in 2000. [eMarketer]
Happy Holiday for European Web Shops?
Euros and pounds head online.
Retail e-commerce continues to grow in the largest Western European economies, although smaller countries are likely to take market share from them in the coming years.
160.6 million European Internet users visited online retail sites in the month of October 2007, an increase of 5% over October 2006, according to comScore World Metrix.
"The fact that the online retail market now covers 70% of the European internet population and is still growing is impressive," said Bob Ivins, executive vice president of comScore, in a statement.
"The stronger than average growth rates in the UK and France portend a healthy Christmas shopping season there," Mr. Ivins said.
The variety of projections on the future of European B2C e-commerce sales widens as the forecast horizon lengthens.
eMarketer's 2010 forecast is more bullish than Forrester Research's but less positive than Deutsche Bank's. Divergent outlooks are not unusual given the complexity of forecasting macroeconomic trends and e-commerce growth for groups of markets around the world.
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Majority of Web Users Watching Video
Nearly three-quarters of US Internet users watched an online video in September 2007, according to comScore Video Metrix.
comScore said the average viewer watched three hours of online video during the month. US Internet users viewed more than nine billion online videos in September.
Google sites (including YouTube) had the largest online video audience with 71.6 million unique viewers. Fox Interactive Media (MySpace) had 41.2 million and Yahoo! sites had 39.6 million unique viewers.
Nearly 70 million people viewed more than 2.5 billion videos on YouTube.com. More than 38 million people viewed approximately 360 million videos on MySpace.com. The average online video duration was 2.7 minutes. The average online video viewer consumed 68 videos, or more than two per day. [eMarketer]
Social Networks Trusted More Than Ads
Internet users are far more likely to trust their social networking contacts than vendors, advertisers or blogs, according to a Faves.com study cited in a MarketingCharts article.
More than one-third of Internet users surveyed by Faves said they “highly trusted” information from friends and acquaintances in their online social networks. Nine in 10 said they at least "moderately trusted" their social network contacts.
Only 4% had a high amount of trust for content and opinions from vendors, advertisers, blogs or forums. Content and opinions in news communities such as Digg and Reddit drew high trust from 3% of respondents.
“Two years ago, only 13% of the people we surveyed visited a social-networking site weekly—today, that number is 34%," said Rob Dickerson, CEO of Faves, in a statement.
"Two years ago only 9% visited a media sharing site, such as YouTube or Flickr, weekly—today, that number is 26%," Mr. Dickerson said.
More than one-third of respondents said they visited a social networking site at least once a week. [eMarketer]
Is the Internet Becoming Rich Media?
All that glitters is now online.
At one time it was commonly held that no one could sell high-priced items online. That time has come…and gone. Affluent users are not only online, as a percentage of the total Internet population they are growing.
In fact, eMarketer projects that the number of affluent users in the US will increase from 43.7 million in 2006 to 57.1 million in 2011.
“What makes this surge of the rich online particularly impressive,” says Paul Verna, eMarketer Senior Analyst and author of the new report Affluent Internet Users: How the Rich Live Online, “is that the percentage of affluent US households, defined as households with incomes of $100,000 or more, has remained comparatively steady over the past seven years.”
Researchers increasingly recognize this demographic as the “mass affluent” segment of society. As the term implies, the group is both a mass movement and an exclusive segment in the upper percentiles of US income earners.
“To reach them, discount marketers are reaching upward by offering upscale products and brands,” Mr. Verna said. “At the same time, luxury goods marketers that have traditionally catered to the highly affluent—the so-called ‘super rich’—are also targeting them with lower-priced versions of high-end items.”
The growth of the online affluent segment is spurred by the fact that the affluent are typically early adopters of new technology, and they are conversation catalysts.
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Internet User Attention Often Divided
Ads need to resonate across multiple media. More than eight in 10 Internet users also do some offline activity while online, according to Burst Media.
Burst found that nearly three out of five Internet users watched television while online.
"TV and the Internet have long been multitasking buddies," said Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst at eMarketer. "It makes sense to create ad messages that resonate across media."
The second most common offline activity for online multitaskers was job-related activities (33.0%), followed by reading a book (31.1%), a magazine or newspaper (29.7%) and talking on a mobile phone (23.6%).
"Keep in mind that many of these activities are not representative of true multitasking," Ms. Williamson said. "It's one thing to go online with the radio playing in the background, but it's all but impossible to read text on a Web page and in a newspaper at the same time. Consumers are switching focus, rather than multitasking."
"Still, anytime your attention is divided, your ability to recall and comprehend ad messages is impacted."
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Consumers Favor Ad-Supported Content
More than seven in 10 Internet users prefer ad-supported Web site content to fee-based content, according to a Direct Marketing Association-sponsored study conducted by ORC International.
Nearly nine in 10 respondents said they usually visited ad-supported sites. Only 10% said they usually accessed subscription or fee-based sites.
“The verdict is in—consumers have overwhelmingly responded to an open Internet supported by relevant advertising," said John A. Greco Jr., CEO of the DMA, in a statement.
Asked about whether they were aware that Internet companies were collecting information regarding their Web browsing, 70% said yes.
Many of the 30% of consumers who said they were not aware of behavioral targeting had not yet used the Internet.
The ORC surveyed 1,000 US adults on behalf of the DMA. [eMarketer]
80% of Internet Users To Get Second Life
Gartner predicts that 80% of active Internet users and Fortune 500 companies will have an avatar or presence in a virtual environment like Second Life by the end of 2011.
Gartner said that enterprise clients should experiment with virtual environments, but hold off on heavy investments until the environments stabilize and mature.
The predictions were made during "Symposium/ITxpo 2007: Emerging Trends," and were accompanied by five laws to guide enterprises in their virtual ventures.
First Law: Virtual worlds are not games, but neither are they a parallel universe (yet). "How do we exploit this as a sales channel?" is the wrong first question to ask.
Second Law: Behind every avatar is a real person. Enterprise users must consider their corporate reputations when dealing with avatars.
Third Law: Be relevant and add value. "Do not expect to undertake profitable commercial activities inside most virtual worlds in the next three years," said Steve Prentice of Gartner.
Fourth Law: Understand and contain the downside. Ask if virtual-world activities undermine or influence branding in the real world. Adult content is a large part of virtual economies, so appropriate behavior and ethics must be considered.
Fifth Law: This is a long haul. Virtual environments have developed through the convergence of social networking, simulation and online gaming. The stability and scalability of many new entrants are not yet established. [eMarketer]
Social Networking Increases Internet Time
Watching too much TV? Start social networking.
Social networking increases Internet usage, according to a Marketing Evolution study commissioned by MySpace called "Never Ending Friending."
A copy of the study provided to eMarketer reveals that nearly a third of social network users ages 14-40 have increased their Internet usage, while 8% decreased usage. Usage remained the same for the rest of those surveyed.
Although increased time online does not usually cut into TV viewing, the study indicated that social networkers do spend less time watching television than non-social networkers — over two hours less every week.
That extra time online is mainly spent at...social networks. MySpace is the top site in terms of percentage of time spent online, according to Compete, and Facebook is in the top 10 as well. In fact, 12% of all time online for US Internet users in December 2006 was spent at MySpace.
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Worldwide Internet Penetration Grew 10% in 2006
The days of US dominance in Internet users are numbered.
Nearly 750 million people ages 15 and older used the Internet worldwide in January 2007, up 10% over January 2006, according to new data from comScore Media Metrix.
India, the Russian Federation and China all saw heavy Internet user growth in 2006, growing 33%, 21% and 20%, respectively. China now has the world's second-largest Internet population, with 87 million users ages 15 and older. The US had 153 million users ages 15 or older in January 2007.
"Internet users outside the U.S. now account for 80 percent of the world's online population," reported Bob Ivins of comScore Europe, "with rapidly developing countries experiencing double-digit growth rates year-over-year."
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Working With a Net, but No Wires
On-the-go Internet users are an attractive demographic.
According to a new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 34% of Internet users have connected using a wireless network. And 27% of Internet users have connected wirelessly from someplace other than home or work.
Why should online marketers care how people get online?
For starters, wireless users are more frequent Internet users: 72% of wireless users check e-mail on the typical day, compared with 63% of home broadband users and 54% of all Internet users.
In addition, 46% of wireless users get news online during the typical day, compared with 38% of home broadband users and 31% of all Internet users.
Most wireless users (80%) have broadband connections at home, so they are hardly dependent on public wireless access nodes. Rather, wireless users may be viewed as "deeper" Internet users than those who use wired connections exclusively.
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