Where are the Women?
A few weeks ago a comment on Mashable regarding the lack of women users of Google+ made me take notice. According to their article, SocialStatistics estimated that in July Google+ had 87% male users, which obviously meant that only a tiny amount of its users were female. This huge male domination Mashable attributed to the fact that Google+ had appealed mainly to techies upon its launch, which I guess unfortunately has some truth to it.
Anyhow, following the huge amount of publicity over the last few months it would have been strange if this percentage would stay as skewed in favour of the male gender as it was so I decided to check up on this again.
So today I checked out SocialStatistics for an update on the divide. SocialStatistics track 83,621 Google+ profiles to reach
conclusions on a variety of issues of possible interest, among them the gender divide issue. And sure enough, male can still be seen as the dominant gender on Google+, but at least the divide is becoming more even as males are now only making up 68.6% of the users, with females closing in on the gap at 30.3%
In Mashable’s article they checked another site as well to confirm the divide so I decided to have a look at that as well. The site they used was FindPeopleOnPlus.com and at that time the percentage of male users according to them was actually “only” 74% compared to SocialStatistics 87%. I would say the discrepancy comes from the fact that at that point Google+ was fairly new and hence the sites compiling the statistics would also be fairly new and possibly facing some small issues in establishing reliable figures, but also from the fact that SocialStatistics uses a much smaller pool of people for their figures than what FindPeopleOnPlus does.
A quick peak on FindPeopleOnPlus shows us that the figures have indeed become more similar, posing a more reliable result for what the gender divide really is. The results here show male users making up 68.9% of all users versus the females making up 30.2%. The question that remains is, how long will it take for us to reach a more equal 50%-50% divide?
Now that we know Google+ worked like a charm for techies (and hence male users), what will the similar success story for females be?
Super Bowl and Courting Women Viewers
This week Nielsen reported on the record numbers of African American, Hispanic and female viewers that helped propel this year’s Super Bowl XLV to become the most-watched television program of all time. This year’s Super Bowl (111,4 million viewers) surpassed the ATH set by last year’s Super Bowl (106.5 million viewers) as the most watched TV program in U.S. history and kicked the leading final episode of M*A*S*H (105.5 million viewers in 1983) off the top.
Part of this success came from the increasing amount of Hispanic and African American viewers. This year about 10 million Hispanics watched the game (surpassing last year’s figure was 8.3 million viewers) while 12.5 million African American tuned in as well (surpassing last year’s figure of 11.2 million).
Part of this success came from the increasing amount of female viewers that Super Bowl XLV attracted. According to Nielsen, about 51.2 million female viewers watched Sunday’s game, compared to 48.5 million female viewers last year, meaning that we are closing in on a 50% – 50% split in gender now for the viewers of Super Bowl spectacle, even if it still continues to be dominated by male viewers.
Just like so many other industries (gambling and casual games especially) the sports industry has started looking towards women and ethnic groups when trying to grow their viewer numbers.
As previously reported by Nielsen, more American women watch the NFL than any other team sport, and not just the Super Bowl. The NFL (regular season) has by now surpassed Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association in percentage of female viewers, to a large extent thanks to the extensive investment in various marketing ploys catering to the female viewer.
One can only hope that the slightly embarrassing female targeted version of ESPN, ESPNW will soon start picking up on some of these “radical” marketing techniques (coaching clinics, apparel that fits women…) that seem to have worked for NFL.
Super Bowl Goes Casual
It’s that time of the year again. Or that’s at least what I am being told from anyone who is a) an NFL fan, b) an American, c) a gambler as they are gearing up for this year’s Super Bowl.
Having grown up with ice hockey and ski jumping, I was never really subjected to this American sports and family get together tradition. But that changed radically following our move closer to the land of the free and brave as well as with the change in target audience within my work.
But as the big event is getting closer (and Texas is trying to get its power sorted to make this years SuperBowl into the usual brightly shining beacon of all sports events) I have started to really look forward to it. Not the game as such, but this is also the marketing event of the year when companies spend millions on getting their ad showing to the millions of fans watching the game.
What caught my attention this year was the new type of ad that will be airing. The ad I am talking about will be featuring the stars of one of the most popular iphone games in 2010 – Angry Birds! The Super Bowl Angry Birds 30 sec ad will feature a secret code that will apparently unlock a special level in the mobile game and will most likely have thousands of fans desperately inspecting each screen for any clues as to where this secret code lies.
Everyone who watch the Super Bowl ad, who find the secret code, unlock the special level and reach the special level in the game will be entered into a sweepstakes for a grand prize. Mashable mentions it being atrip to Rio de Janeiro to see the Angry Birds Rio movie premiere on March 22, when the Angry Birds movie will be released along with its mobile app.
What I find interesting is that it has taken this long for casual games to push through and into the “big boys ad league”, hosted during Super Bowl halftime, considering its massive and continuously growing popularity everywhere. It will also be interesting to see how big the participation and enthusiasm will be for this game and its ad following its release, and if they will be able to keep it under wraps all the way until Sunday as has been tradition among advertisers at Super Bowl.
Put your votes in at the AdBlitz YouTube Channel immediately after the game – And let the best bird win!
How Business Men and Women Differ in Their Actions Online
Time flies. Especially recently I have noticed it going even faster than usual, and it is painfully clear when looking at how I have been neglecting this blog for quite some time already. To start off again, I will post something I actually already wrote ages ago, but that I hope is still of interest. I promise to be better with regards to keeping you all updated on a more regular basis from now on about women, games, marketing and in general the happenings in our ever more gamified wild world and web.
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When it comes to online ads and the upper levels of the professional world, men and women interact very differently, and if we are to believe a study by online ad targeting company Bizo, women tend to click while men tend to act on them.
The study was done between January and July (2010) and included a survey of over 80 million business professionals. In addition to the above mentioned finding, the study also showed that both genders tend to interact with online ads at vastly differing times of the day and night.
Women apparently deliver a 23% higher clickthrough rate than men, while men are 53% more likely to actually buy, start a free trial, download or complete another action related to the ad than would their female counterparts. Interestingly enough, guys tend to click at at 3:00 a.m (EST) while women are more likely to click at 5 a.m. In contrast to this, it takes men until 4:00pm to be most likely to act while women act sooner, already at 11:00 a.m. Obviously, these times are slightly skewed based on different timezones and are only indications, but they seem to show an interesting difference in how we act online depending on our gender.
But gender isnt the only thing that matters when it comes to who clicks and when, just like Rebecca Lieb lays out in her blog entry on eConsultancy. Job Roles and industries also show an affect on people, with people working in publishing, accounting, drug stores/pharmacies, veterinary services and agriculture serving up the most clicks. The least-likely to click work in car rental, aerospace and defense manufacturing, media/music, boats and marine manufacturing and higher education.
Interestingly enough, the people most inclined to act on advertised offers work in business services, media/internet, hospitality, advertising/marketing, industries that have a lot of contact with this format of communication. Least likely to act are again the professionals in car rental, aerospace and defense manufacturing, but also those in weight/health management, construction/residential building and graphic design.
Top clickers are employed in the following roles: operations change management, IT database, government sales support and operations compliance. The most actions are taken by C-level executives, IT, Marketing, medical/health and advertising professionals.
So, where do you fit in? And are you a “stereotypical” male or female clicker?
Women Increasingly Using Male Oriented Sites
Women have started increasing their presence on traditionally male oriented sites online. Today women are showing an increasing interest in areas such as sports, cars and technology, opening up interesting opportunities for advertisers as well as website content creations.
Interestingly enough, online sports sites today show similar visitor patterns for females and males. The study by ComScore, published on MarketingCharts shows that among women, the reach is slightly less than 30% for 15-to-24-year-olds. It then grows to 30% for 25-to-34-year-olds, only slightly increases for 35-to-44-year-olds before it peaks at close to 40% for 45-to-54-year-olds and women 55 and up.
Looking at the male figures, the reach of sports site is slightly less than 40% for 15-to-24-year-olds and hits 40% for both 25-to-34-year-olds and 35-to-44-year-olds. It then surpasses 40% for 45-to-54-year-olds and stays virtually flat for men 55 and up. Slightly higher figures than what is recorded for women, but still not that far off.
Something that is still as it alwasy has been is the substantially higher amount of time that men spend on sports sites compared to women in every age bracket. The average total per month for men peaks at 70 minutes per month among 25-to-34-olds, a figure that is roughly double the average monthly time spent of women in that age group.
In online gambling a lot of the advertising is still somewhat male oriented. It will be interesting to see if this will be modified at all to reach out to sports interested females as well as to fit the gambling habits of the female punter.
