60% of US Web Surfers Say News Is The Most Important Content On the Internet, But They Complain Most Online Advertising Is Targeted At Age Groups Other Than Their Own

But teenagers and senior citizens (the over 55s) doubt that the news they read is really targeted for them, and that same feeling applies, too, for the advertising. A majority of web users said they thought a lot of the web advertising on news sites they visited was focused at age groups different to their own.

Overall, sixty-two per cent of 6,400 online users aged over 14 told BURST! they are more interested in news than anything else when they log-on. But a breakdown in demographics showed the familiar trend that for teens their favorite web activity was games and for 18-34 year-olds the winner was entertainment information, but news was a very close second. The older the demographic the more news comes into play.

ftm background

Overall Global Advertising In 2005 Is Forecast Lower, But the Internet Spend Keeps Going Up With Television Feeling the Worst Pinch of Ad Placements Going Elsewhere
The television share of global advertising appears to have peaked at 38% and is now on the way down, led by two of the world’s leading television markets – The US and Japan – according to new report issued by the ZenithOptimedia Group.

After Asia-Pacific, Europe Is The World’s Second Largest Broadband Market With More and More Video Programming Being Streamed
Europe is witnessing the death of dial-up Internet with some countries probably eliminating it completely within five years, according to a new study by Strategic Analytics. And as broadband grows, so, too, are the video streaming programs on offer, whether from new start-ups or major players like the BBC and BSkyB.

France and Italy Hit Double Digit Home Internet Usage Growth in 2004 But More Mature European Countries Slow to Single Digit Growth
That’s Still Better Than the US -- the Only Country to See Negative Growth!

With Record Internet Advertising in 2004 on Both Sides of the Atlantic Is It Any Wonder Traditional Media Invests Big-Time Buying Online Sites?
US Internet advertising grew 17% in the 2004 fourth quarter to achieve a record $9.6 billion for the year – that’s 32% more than 2003 and 19% more than in 2000 when the dot com boom was at its highest. Some European countries are reporting even higher percentage gains....

European Ad Growth to Slow in 2005
European ad growth is forecast to be a bit less in 2005 than in 2004 with only Germany among the major countries expected to see growth improvement, according to media agency Carat.

And it seems that journalistically the news is being aimed right at the demographics the advertisers are most interested in – the 18-24, and the 25-34 groups. And those groups were the only ones to say they thought the news was targeted for them!

Some 58% of readers aged over 55 said they thought the content was aimed at people younger than they, while 34% of the 14-17 age groups thought the content was aimed at older people – and both groups are probably right.

And they felt the same about the advertising. In the 25-34 age group some 46% believe the advertising was focused on their age group, while 34% believe it was targeted at other age groups. In the 14-17age bracket some 55% believe the advertising was aimed at an older audience, while the 35-44 group believed advertising was aimed at people younger than them. By the time you hit the senior citizens some 72% of respondents believed the advertising was focused at younger demographics.

The bottom line on all this, according to BURST CEO Jarvis Cofin is that a lot of people online are not getting the advertising message they should be getting. “The results of this remind us that consumers are aware that they are being marketed to. Clearly there are substantial groups of audience outside the 25-34 age segment that are available online, but they are either being approached with the wrong products and services or being approached in the wrong way,” he said.

All of this sounds a bit familiar to the problem CBS-TV had for many years. It was number 1 in the ratings, but its shows tended to attract the older viewer – not the target advertisers wanted. CBS eventually had to reprogram to attract the younger viewer and that in turn attracted new advertising dollars.

The web sites run by free newspapers like Metro and 20 Minutes tend to target the young in their news reporting and in their advertising. Older readers tend to go to the more traditional newspaper sites. Those traditional newspapers are also beginning to establish additional sites just to attract the young. The trend would seem to be that one news site cannot fulfill the needs of everyone, and choices are being made on whom the target really is.

Meanwhile the Aegis Group, the parent of Carat, has revised its global advertising spend outlook and its sees acceleration in Asia, and deceleration in Western Europe, with the US staying stable but having to deal with reallocation of the spend from traditional media to digital media.

“We are seeing some interesting shifts in the allocation of advertising budgets,” according to Aegis CEO Robert Lerwill. “Television’s share of the advertising spend is leveling out and newspaper’s share of advertising is declining, with budgets shifting to the Internet.”

In tandem with rising newspaper circulation – particularly in China and India -- the advertising spend in Asia is ever increasing while the opposite is true in Europe, according to the Aegis report. “The Asian advertising market is thriving and, at the current growth rate, it will overtake Europe in spend terms by 2008.”

European ad growth was downgraded by .0.4% – the UK alone was downgraded 1.1% and that seems to match recent reports from newspapers and television reporting very soft first half advertising revenue. Asia, on the other hand saw its growth upgraded by an additional 1%.

According to the respected Jack Myers 2006 Marketing and Advertising Spending Forecast for the US, it is video games followed by online advertising that will benefit the most from the spend reallocation. He sees in-game advertising increasing by 40% in 2006 – that still represents less than 1 per cent of the total ad spend but is indicative that the money is being spread around.

He says online advertising will increase in 2006 by 27% to reach a 6.4% share of the total ad spend. And where is that money coming from? He predicts television will drop from 8.6% market share to 8.0% total ad spend. Mind you, that’s still $17 billion!

But there are signs that advertising overall is beginning to slow in the US, even Online. Nielsen Monitor-Plus reports that while spending for online display ads rose a very respectable 12.6% for the first six months of 2005 (what newspaper wouldn’t love to see such an increase for its print display ads?) that was way down from the 25-34% predictions made by leading forecasters at the beginning of the year.

Also search ads generated by search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN, and which makes up close to half of all online ad revenue, saw keyword prices drop an average 9% in August, from $1.65 to $1.50, according to Fathom Online.

US magazines, that in general have been enjoying increased advertising pages every month this year suddenly saw a 2.2% drop in August compared to the same month a year ago. July had been up 3.1% compared to a year earlier.

And most major newspaper groups are reporting poor August figures, continuing a general trend of very little, if any, advertising growth although small local newspapers seem to be doing better than the major metropolitan ones.

Could it be the 2005 advertising year may go out with a whimper, rather than the predicted bang?

60% of US Web Surfers Say News Is The Most Important Content On the Internet, But They Complain Most Online Advertising Is Targeted At Age Groups Other Than Their Own

News is of more interest than anything else on the Internet, according to a new study from BURST! Media, and that is good news for newspapers since their web sites are the most popular news sites on the Web, according to the Newspaper Association of America.