More than half of the users on young, hip, advertising magnet MySpace may be older than 35, a revelation that could be damaging to Fox Interactive Media’s attempts to demand premium rates for ads aimed at what has been touted as a young demographic.
There is a moment in an early episode of The Simpsons where Burns is running for governor, and he spits out a piece of the three-eyed fish Marge served during the televised “dinner with regular people” event. By the time the piece of fish hits the floor, Burns’ campaign is over.
The revelation by comScore that MySpace may be populated more by the grey-haired contingent who are cheering Wal-Mart’s $4 prescription drug program than the young, pliable advertising target promised to deep-pocketed marketers may not go over very well. Possibly as well as Burns for Governor post-fish spit.
It also appears Fox will not deploy FIM president Ross Levinsohn leading a horde of attach-wielding lawyers Braveheart-style against comScore’s cozy headquarters in Northern Virginia. Which is too bad, because as you may have heard, we’re doing video mediacasting these days. Why no Jules-style righteous vengeance?
Because Liz Gannes at GigaOM confirmed the awful truth with Fox:
We called Fox Interactive spokesperson Ann Burkart to ask if comScore is off the deep end on this one, and she said the numbers are actually totally accurate with what MySpace is seeing internally….Burkart’s explanation is that as MySpace expands it is becoming more representative of the population as a whole.
“While the top social networking sites are typically viewed as directly competing with one another, our analysis demonstrates that each site occupies a slightly different niche,” Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix, commented in the report.
“MySpace.com has the broadest appeal across age ranges, Facebook.com has created a niche among the college crowd, Friendster.com attracts a higher percentage of adults, and Xanga.com is most popular among younger teens. There is a misconception that social networking is the exclusive domain of teenagers, but this analysis confirms that the appeal of social networking sites is far broader.”
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
