Key takeaways:
- Ad executives think social media is overhyped.
- Advertising on social media & user generated content sites is risky.
From the “2008 Prospects for Media Mergers and Acquisitions” survey released by AdMedia Partners.
The doubts about the growth prospects for social media networks and user-generated content are not unreasonable, given that what makes them attractive to consumers also makes them very risky for advertisers who can’t predict the nature of the content that forms the context for their ads.
Content remains king, but the only ones selling for marketers are real content – not fluff. The noise with social media networks is only getting advertisers impressions – not a connection or a sale. Online should and can be a sale driver, much more valuable than an impression generator.
About the survey: ADMEDIA PARTNERS, INC. conducted its fourteenth annual survey of nearly 1,600 senior executives at leading media companies in December 2007 to elicit their iews on merger and acquisition activity among U.S. media companies in 2008. Executives from the U.S. and abroad, whose companies operate in a variety of media – many in more than one – responded to the survey.
According to the BIGresearch Simultaneous Media Survey this is how U.S. bloggers stack up against the national average (adults 18+).
- Slightly younger [37.6 years old vs 44.8 years old]
- Slightly better edicated [14.3 years vs 14.2 years]
- Slightly lower income [$55,819 vs $56,811]
Practically a dead heat with the median.
The ethnical breakout of bloggers versus national average:
- White/Caucasian [69.7% vs 76.1%]
- Hispanic [20% vs 14.8%]
- African American [12.2% vs 11.4%]
- Asian [3.7% vs 2.0%]
Of the 26% of U.S. citizen who indicate they blog at least occansionally:
- Gender [53.7% Male - 46.3% Female]
- Marital Status [44.7% Married]
[via MediaPost]
Nearly one-quarter of Americans do not have access to the internet according to a study released last month by by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.
Those without access to the Internet tended to be older, less affluent and less well educated.
The numbers breakout out into the following groups:
- Broadband @ Home: 55%
- Dail-up @ Home: 13%
- Broadband @ Work: 9%
- No Access: 24%
The survey was made up of 2,796 respondents, ages 18+ ; percents do not add up to 100% due to rounding.
MySpace.com averaged 76.35% of all US visits in 2007* among a custom category of 53 leading social-networking websites, followed by Facebook.com, Bebo.com and BlackPlanet.com with 12.57%, 1.24% and 0.87%, respectively, according to Hitwise.
The remaining 49 social networking websites in the custom category accounted for 8.97% of US visits, Hitwise said.
* Data is based on averaging the monthly market share of US visits from Jan. 2007 to Dec. 2007.
[via Marketing Charts]
Pew Internet & American Life Project released survey numbers indicating that the number of internet users who visit video sharing sites is on the rise.
Question: “Do you ever use the internet to watch a video on a video-sharing site like YouTube or GoogleVideo?”
Answer(s): [Ever / Yesterday / Have Not / Don't Know]
- 48% of internet users said they had ever visited a video-sharing site such as YouTube. A year ago, in December 2006, 33% of internet users said they had ever visited such sites. That represents growth of more than 45% year-to-year.
- 15% of respondents said they had used a video-sharing site “yesterday,” the day before they were contacted for our survey. A year ago, 8% had visited such a site “yesterday.” Thus, on an average day, the number of users of video sites nearly doubled from the end of 2006 to the end of 2007.
In addition, they asked:
A) If they had ever recorded their own video.
B) If you record your own video, do you ever post your videos on the internet.
These results come from a survey of 2,054 American adults (age 18 and older) conducted between October 24 and December 2, 2007. The number of internet users asked the video-sharing question was 1,359. The margin of error on the sample of internet users is plus or minus 3 percentage points.