The citizen journalism phenomenon known as blogging has now reached the attentive and contemplative eyes of one third of the Internet population according to statistics released by comScore Networks. That’s 50 million sets of eyeballs, the majority of which, according to Gawker, seems to be connected to (gasp) upper middle class young males. And with that news, e-marketers around the country are calling emergency meetings as we speak.
Discuss your thoughts about the explosion of blog readers at WebProWorld.
It’s no secret in the marketing world that young men with money are the most difficult group to reach. For this demographic, with money to burn and unsettled spending habits, building a career usually takes precedent over TV watching, which is why tons of ad money is piled into Monday Night Football and the Super Bowl.
And the more astute also noticed the network’s counter programming of “Everybody Loves Raymond” on Monday night, soon to be followed this season by “Two and a Half Men.”
Point of fact: it’s just hard to get their attention. The latest blog numbers should be of supreme interest, then, to e-marketers as this arena of media captures that coveted attention.
The key findings of the blogosphere report from comScore Networks:
The total number of blog visitors in 1Q 2005 increased 45% over the same period in 2004. Admittedly, this hardly keeps up with Technorati’s report that the total blogosphere doubles every 5.5 months. Nevertheless, its an upward trend as the public becomes more aware.
Five hosting services for blogs had more than 5 million unique visitors. The top five hosting services are blogspot.com, livejournal.com, typepad.com, xanga.com, and Gawker Network.
Four individual blogs had more than 1 million visitors each. The top blogs are freerepublic.com, drudgereport.com, fleshbot.com, and gawker.com.
Of the 400 largest blogs observed, the most popular blogs were (in order) political blogs, “hipster” lifestyle blogs, tech blogs, and blogs authored by women (women’s blogs, if I were to guess, are probably often visited by young men).
Compared to the average Internet user, blog readers are significantly more likely to live in wealthier households, be younger, and connect to the Internet via high-speed connections.
Blog readers visit nearly twice as many web pages and are much more likely to shop online.
“The fact that we found 30 percent of the online population to have visited blogs clearly underscores the commercial importance of consumer generated and driven media,” Dan Hess, senior vice president of ComScore, said in a statement.
“It’s noteworthy that while the blog audience is already quite large and growing, its demographic composition relative to the total population will appeal to many marketers.”
Gawker, the fifth most visited host, reports that 65% of its audience is between the ages of 18-34, 46% male, and that over one third of them have a household income of over $75,000.
Gizmodo is rife with testosterone, pulling in an 86% male audience, a large number of whom have high income levels. Read a more detailed Gawker report here.
We’ve already discussed why blogs are important to a market strategy. Now its up to the savvy e-marketer to take advantage of these statistics by creating their targeted blog advertising campaign. Good luck.
