The internet played in mobilising demonstrators

This is the first, and I suspect the only time I will quote an article in the Socialist Worker.

For some reason this weird organisation decided to research how people got to know about anti-war demonstrations. It was no surprise to discover that 24% of protesters found out about the demonstration through a website.

It was a surprise that it was not the “internet-savvy youth” who rely most on the web, but older age groups. In particular the 36 to 50 year olds.

Young people were less likely than others to have found out about the demonstration through an email from someone outside of their immediate social circle. Just 3% of the under 18s and 7% of those aged 18 to 25 mentioned this, compared to 22 percent of the over 50s.

This suggests it is the older activists who make the best use of internet and email communication. How interesting. Dick Stroud

Content providers are overlooking the needs of many of today's Internet users

Why when you read this type of headline do you know that the “many of today’s Internet users” are likely to be the 50-plus?

An outfit called Burst Media has conducted an online survey of 13,000 web users 18 years or older and found that the majority of Internet users 45 years and older believe that online content, as well as website design and online advertising is skewed toward younger web users.

There is a good reason for this perception – it IS skewed towards younger web users!

The survey that is only reported in press release format has a few other observations:

· Website usability is an issue for older web users more than for younger people.

· Loss of connectivity is ‘devastating’ at any age. I think that is a bit strong but I know what they mean.

· All ages of people are looking at an “Expanded Universe of Sites”

So there you go. Nothing much new, a couple of statements of the obvious but it does reinforce what us 50-plus marketers have been saying for as long as I can remember (which is not long these days!).

Woops. I should have looked in more detail. There is a report on the site about this research. Thanks to Tom for pointing this out. Dick Stroud

Access to the Internet in the US

Pew Internet has just published some research about the way Americans do (or don’t) access the Internet.

No great surprises, other than a slightly higher level of broadband access amongst the oldest ages group than I would have expected.

Of course the main determining factor is not age but education, as is shown by these numbers. Dick Stroud

Media consumption in the US

Here is an interesting factlet. By 2010, adults 35 and older will spend nearly $3.5 trillion a year. Of that the 45-plus are forecast to spend over $2.6 trillion (Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Wolf Resource Group).

Another factlet. People aged 25 to 54 spend the most time at work or at home on the Internet a week (7.3 hours). That's more than young adults aged 18 to 34 (5.1 hours) or teens 12 to 17 years old (3.4 hours). (Turner Broadcast System chief research officer, Jack Wakshlag, citing Nielsen Media Research data). So much for the young being the “Internet Generation”.

Final factlet. 42% of YouTube users are 35 to 54 years old and that 19% are over 55. The 12-17 year olds make up only 20% of YouTube users.

These an a lot more interesting things about age, technology and media can be found in this article from Broadcasting Newsroom. Dick Stroud

Online fraud and the 50-plus

Imagine this situation. You are a marketer working for the UK’s Post Office and have just been given the job of launching and managing the organisation’s broadband service. That’s a bit like Wal Mart starting to sell Porsches.

You might ask yourself why on earth the UK needs yet another broadband supplier. I bet I know the answer. The Post Office did ‘some research’ and found that a lot of older people are not connected to the Internet – especially the 65+ - especially the poor – especially those with little education. I suspect these conditions were lost in the analysis.

The reasons given for not being online were probably a hotchpotch of ‘can’t see the point’, ‘can’t afford it’, ‘don’t know what I would do with it’. Amongst this list would be something to do with the fear of fraud.

Ahhhhh says the Post Office marketer, I am sure we can something about this and immediately commissions a bit more research that of course shows that older people are fearful of fraud – who isn’t?

Since the Post Office is one of those nice cuddly, trusted brands, then who better to wrap their corporate arms around the older person and provide them with their means to connect to the Internet?

To help position the Post Office as a good citizen it needs to pump out its research findings to reinforce the link between itself and the senior surfer. This brings me to its most recent utterings.

Now I don’t mind this approach – in fact it is what I would probably recommend to the Post Office – but it result in UK’s media, including the BBC, being stuffed full of misleading generalisations about older people and fraud.

It is a perfect illustration that the only way to get heard is to shout a single message– even if that grossly simplifies and distorts the truth. Dick Stroud

The UK’s Post Office enters the broadband market to target excluded audiences

This is a quote from the press release.

The new broadband services is primarily targeted at the ‘NETSKI’ generation (whatever that is) of 50-65 year olds with a high disposable income who are going online for the first time - and customers wanting to pre-pay in cash.

The managing director of the Post Office, said: "Until now, some significant groups in society have missed out on all the internet has to offer purely because broadband is perceived as a complicated luxury”.

The new broadband services will be backed by a £9 million marketing campaign across TV, national print and online media, as well as in-branch. The campaign will feature reformed boy band, Westlife.(what a strange choice)

I am not so sure about this idea.

The affluent, well educate 50-65 year old does not view broadband as a ‘luxury’ but a necessity.

The reason why a 50-65 year old has not adopted broadband is for one of the four reasons:
A. Use a PC but cannot afford broadband
B. Use a PC but cannot see the benefit of upgrading to broadband
C. Don’t use a PC and never will
D. Don’t use a PC – would like to – but it all it seems too much of an effort to learn

So what will this new service do to get over these four barriers? I am not sure. For the sake of the Post Office I hope they are! Dick Stroud

It's all about socio-economic group

When Robert Worcester, the founder of MORI, writes something, it is worth reading. In this brief article he explains, in words of one syllable, the idiocy of using the Internet to target older (and not so older) poorer people.

Look at the analysis. Less than one in ten of the 65+ who are in the DE socio-economic group have access to the Internet.

Look at it another way. If you are an AB, in the 55-64 year age group, you are more likely to be online than anybody aged 15-34 in socio economic groups C2DE and only 6% different from anybody in the C1 group. Remember that in this case socio-economic group is a proxy for the level of person's education. Education above everything else determines Internet connection. Dick Stroud

The UK Communications Marketing (Part 2)

Here are a couple of more graphs from the Ofcom study.

Two things stand out.

From 25-64 the penetration of Internet users is pretty much constant and then dives after 65. This we know. What is really interesting is to see the number of hours spent online. The highest figure is for the active Internet user over-65. So what we have got is a small but very active band of 65-plus Internet users.

This brings us onto the second point about the gender of older users. Look at the big jump that occurs around 60 in the percentage of men. Now this has some interesting implications for marketers. Dick Stroud

Playing games and using the computer

Some more figures from the US Department of Labor Statistics showing the hours spent each weekday on games and using the computer, by age group. What an interesting shaped curve. I am amazed that the figure rises so high for the 75+. Research is always true? Dick Stroud

Internet shopping

A report just published by the UK’s Office of Fair Trading estimates the domestic internet shopping market is worth over £21.4bn, and last year over 20 million people shopped online with nearly a third of them spending over £1,000. This is a substantial body of research and if Internet shopping is your thing then it worth downloading.

The thing that caught my eye was the age analysis of internet use and of the propensity to shop online. See above charts are taken from one of the downloaded annexes. As you can see, and would imagine, there is a big drop at 65+ for the level of Internet use but once somebody is connected there is little difference in the likelihood to shop online. This is exactly the same behaviour that you see with online banking. Dick Stroud

Digital habits of the 50+

This 100 page survey,conducted for a UK Government agency, has a few interesting bits and pieces about the digital habits and wants and needs of the 50+. Much of the research is irrelevant. Click the above images for an enlarged view. Dick Stroud

Factlet about European Web users

This is not strictly about the 50-plus but a very useful element of research from Comscore (remember that the 50-plus are significant web users). Dick Stroud

More 55+ Internet users than 35-44 year olds

UK internet users aged 55-plus are set to overtake 35-44 year olds as the demographic age group with the largest representation online. Those aged 55+ accounted for 22% of UK visits to all categories of websites in the four weeks to 12 May 2007, up 54% since 2005 and 40% since 2006. This compares to 23.5% of Internet visits from 35-44 year olds.

The VP of Research for Hitwise UK commented: "Among the top categories visited by those aged 55+, Search Engines, Adult and Shopping & Classifieds are the favorites, and are consistent with the most visited categories overall". Not surprisingly, Travel and News and Media websites are also high volume sites. Last week, 27% of visits to Travel websites and 24% of visits to News and Media websites were from those aged 55+.

You can read more about this analysis in this press article from Internet Retailing. Dick Stroud

Fascinating facts - handle with care

Nielsen//NetRatings has released research about the UK’s internet population segmented by age and gender.

If you want any proof of how age segmentation is a total waste of space it is this data.

Anybody who has spent 5 minutes researching how the over-50s use the Internet know that there is a massive difference between the over-65s and their juniors.

By lumping these totally different age groups together you end up with a conclusion about the 50-plus that is at worst useless but more likely dangerously misleading.

A little bit of free consultancy to Nielsen//NetRatings. When you next publish these numbers at least split the 50-plus into two age groups. Dick Stroud

Social networking factlets

There is something about the enormity of the Internet and its global reach that I still finding amazing. Research published by Universal McCann came up with these factlets:

More than 170 million people globally now post blogs that are read regularly by 340 million internet users –the largest audience is the US, where 64 million read blogs.

The number of people watching video clips online has doubled from 31 per cent to 62 per cent in the last nine months.

194 million Internet users have joined a social network.

Even if these numbers are 20% inaccurate they are still stunning. Dick Stroud

Watch out myspace – 50plusmarketing has you in its sights

Between my first and second cup of coffee this morning I set up my own social networking Web site. Really. Go and have a look.

Ning is a new venture that claims to be the only online service where you can create, customize, and share your own Social Network for free in seconds. The network can be public or private.

This is a smart Web site and I really hope it succeeds. My nagging doubt is that now I have all of this networking power – what I am I going to do with it? Probably more important – when am I going to have time to use it? I have a blog, I have my own channel on YouTube and couple of Wikkis and now Ning.

I am drowning in opportunity. Dick Stroud.

Blogburst syndication

This is what it says on the Web site.

Pluck's BlogBurst network is an opt-in aggregation and syndication service that brings high-quality, topical blogs together with high-traffic web sites. With BlogBurst, bloggers gain visibility, audience reach and traffic through placement on major online publishers and media destinations in real time.

We will see if it works in practice. All of your publishers out there - click the icon for more information.

Marketers like WiFi users

Research from Pew Internet concludes that wireless users are more frequent Internet users and they get more news online than boring home broadband users.

Wireless Internet users are, on the whole, younger and better educated, and they have higher incomes than Internet users in general.

As you can see, WiFi hasn’t made too much of an impact on the 65+. Dick Stroud