What is the average age of the reader of your blog? Or, what’s the age distribution of the readers of your “competitors” blog, tweets, Facebook page …
I’ve been exploring Google’s Ad Planner to find an answer to some of these questions. With Ad Planner you can:
“Identify websites your target customers are likely to visit
- Define audiences by demographics and interests
- Search for websites relevant to your target audience
- Access unique users, page views, and other data for millions of websites from over 40 countries”
It’s the last bullet point above that I’ll be exploring in this post.
As a starter let’s consider some Social Media sites: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn – well that should be the majority! The overall age distribution for these Social Network sites for the UK, and the US (for comparison) is:
|
Twitter |
Facebook |
LinkedIn |
| Age |
UK |
US |
UK |
US |
UK |
US |
| 0-17 |
5% |
11% |
9% |
18% |
2% |
3% |
| 18-24 |
15% |
8% |
12% |
7% |
8% |
3% |
| 25-34 |
32% |
17% |
31% |
14% |
31% |
15% |
| 35-44 |
22% |
28% |
24% |
20% |
27% |
31% |
| 45-54 |
15% |
21% |
13% |
25% |
18% |
26% |
| 55-64 |
8% |
12% |
8% |
12% |
11% |
18% |
| 65- |
3% |
3% |
3% |
4% |
3% |
4% |
|
100% |
100% |
100% |
100% |
100% |
100% |
Drilling down on the UK users only, and to enhance the comparison I’ve added “Club Penguin” (Disney’s: “virtual world for children” UK users only), and “Age Concern” (soon to be called “Age UK”: “… to promote the well-being of all older people …”):
No surprises for Club Penguin with, for the UK, 50% of it’s users (“unique visitors per month”) being under 18. And, for Age UK the majority, nearly a quarter, of its users are aged 55-65, with 55% of them being over 45 years old.
But what of the Social Media sites and UK users? For Twitter (UK) over half are aged between 25 – 45 years old, with the majority, nearly a third, being 25-35 years old. This is almost repeated for Facebook (UK), and LinkedIn (UK) but in the latter case over three quarters of it’s UK users are aged between 25 and 55 – which is not surprising given the use of LinkedIn.
When compared with the US, however, you’ll find that the majority users are older for all three Social Media sites. With over a quarter of the majority of users of Twitter (US), and just under a third of the LinkedIn (US) users, being aged 35-45. Surprisingly, the majority age range for Facebook (US) is older than Facebook (UK) with some quarter of the users being 45-55 years old – though this may be a reflection of the origins of Facebook in the US.
When the population size (“number of unique visitors per month”) is included a representation of age distribution of Social Media users for the UK and US can be derived. From Ad Planner the number of “users” are: Twitter (UK) – 3.8 million, Twitter (US) – 21 million; Facebook (UK) – 25 million, Facebook (US) – 130 million; and LinkedIn (UK) – 2.4 million, LinkedIn (US) – 16 million. Giving an age distribution of Social Media users by Country:
This shows a distinct bias! The majority of Social Media users in the UK are aged 25-35 years, whereas in the US they are significantly older being 45-55 years old. A calculation of the average ages gives; Twitter: 37 (UK) – 39 (US), Facebook: 36 (UK) – 38 (US), and LinkedIn: 40 (UK) – 45 (US). So quite similar bias towards the older users of Twitter and Facebook in the US, but with a significantly older user of LinkedIn in the US.
Finally, when gender is included another significant difference is apparent between the UK and the US users of Social Media sites:
For both Twitter and Facebook some 60% of the Social Media users in the US are female. This is almost reversed for the UK with 57% of the Twitter users, and 45% of the Facebook users, being male. For the US the bias is less obvious with an almost equal distribution of the genders accessing LinkedIn (52% female, 48% male). Whilst the majority of UK users of LinkedIn are male at 59%.
The Google Ad Planner site also displays traffic statistics including the daily trend in visitors over a set period (1 year). For example, below is the traffic statistics for Twitter for UK visitors for the year ending February 2010.
That all goes to show that Google knows a great deal about us! (see: “A special report on managing information: Clicking for gold“, The Economist)
An on-line study, commissioned by ATG (Art Technology Group Inc. – “the premier provider of personalized cross-channel commerce software and services“), identifies that consumers use multiple channels when seeking information about a potential purchase.
The study states that “more than three-quarters of the consumers used two or more channels to research and complete the transaction.” While nearly another third used “three or more channels.” However, the majority admitted that they would ultimately go to a store to make the purchase as they wanted to “touch and feel the product.”
“, Marc Benioff’s (co-founder 1999, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com), Part 6: The Corporate Philanthropy Playbook, starts with Play#64: “The Business of Business is more than Business” – a quote widely attributed to the American economist, statistician, and a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics; 
