Nearly thirty million (29.4) people in the U.K. accessed at least one social networking site in May, averaging 4.6 hours per visitor during the month, with Facebook ranking as the most popular property, according to comScore.
The majority (80%) of the total U.K. online population visited a social networking site in May. Visits were highest among 25-34 year old Internet users, with 89 percent visiting the category during the month, followed by 15-24 year olds (86%). Visits were somewhat lower among older age groups, but remained relatively high, reaching two thirds of the total online population age 55 and older.
Engagement leaned more heavily towards the younger age segments, with 15-25 and 25-34 year olds averaging 5.4 hours per user per month compared with 3.7 hours per month among users 55 and older. Overall, social networking was the second most popular online activity in the U.K. based on average time spent per user (4.6 hours), trailing only instant messaging (8.6 hours).
“Accurate demographic profiling is the crux of effective digital media planning and advertising,” said Mike Read, SVP and managing director, comScore Europe. “Understanding audience composition is particularly important in a category such as social networking, as there continues to be a misconception that social networking is the preserve of the young.”
“While those under 35 years old are certainly the more prevalent users, there is both a sizeable and heavily engaged audience of those 35 and older as well. In fact, advertising on social networking sites has a better chance of reaching these older demographics than site categories such as business and finance, which is a critical insight that might be lost for those trying to optimize their campaign against target audience segments.”
Of the 36.9 million people in the U.K. who accessed the Internet from a home or work location during the month, 29.4 million visited at least one social networking site, representing an 80 percent reach and a 9 percent increase in growth over the previous year.
Facebook was the most popular social networking site with 23.9 million visitors, followed by Bebo (8.5 million visitors), Windows Live Profile (6.9 million visitors) and MySpace sites (6.5 million visitors). Twitter grew more than 3,000 percent during the past year to 2.7 million visitors in May.
