Blog readers are sexy·
Gawker sales people tell advertisers that the blog audience is young, rich and influential. It's a reasonable assumption. Blog readers are early adopters, and one would assume that they would have a profile much like the early internet audience.
We hoped that contention was true, because it's at the core of the pitch: that blogs can help marketers reach people, above all, young guys, who are abandoning network television, and never really got into the newspaper reading habit.
But I have to confess that we only had some data from Burst reader surveys, and anecdotes, to support the case. And one survey, by Blogads, was contradictory, showing high household income, but a surprisingly mature age profile.
So, along with Six Apart, we asked one of the leading market research firms to conduct a more rigorous study. I was apprehensive about the results -- maybe all our readers are pensioners in Florida -- but they're a relief.
comScore Media Metrix, which conducted the analysis, looked at US internet usage in the first quarter of 2005. The study is out later today, and will be available off the comScore website, but here's a draft. There's plenty of interesting data, including the first definitive measurement of the size of the blog audience. There's only one measurement that matters, however, to media buyers at the ad agencies. comScore found that, while 37% of internet users had annual household income in excess of $75,000, 41% of blog readers were in that top band.
That may not sound like much of a difference. But based on their age profile alone, one would expect blog readers to be poorer: 32% are between 18 and 34, compared with 24% of the general internet population. Youth, with wealth, is, to advertisers, a rare and desirable combination.
This conclusion alone should help persuade advertisers to shift more of their online budgets to blogs. Some of the more adventurous brands, such as Nike, Absolut and Audi, have experimented with blog advertising. And some marketers, such as the movie studios, have no choice but to follow their audiences online. But the vast majority of advertisers have been waiting for data. Here it is.
We also asked Comscore, outside of the blogosphere study, to break out numbers for Gawker sites. Personal blog pages, on networks such as Blogspot and Livejournal, are so numerous and popular that they drown out the characteristics of blog titles such as Gawker, Boing Boing and Engadget.
The Gawker numbers, which I'd expect would be mirrored by WIN and FM Publishing groups, show even higher household income and geekiness. 90% of Gawker readers access the web over broadband, for example.
If individual Gawker sites were rolled up, the combined reach would be 3.48m for the first quarter, putting the network in fifth place, after Xanga, but ahead of AOL Journals, blogs.com and MSN Spaces. Four of the top ten standalone sites are Gawker titles.
However, sites with reader engagement have higher frequency of visits, and faster growth rates. Engadget, which has comments, was only founded in 2004, but was already in the top ten by the first quarter of 2005, and probably overtook Gizmodo, our rival gadget site, soon after. And personal blog networks such as Blogs.com, Typepad and Blogdrive also experienced growth rates in excess of 200%, way faster than the blogosphere in general. I might have to rethink my rather snobby aversion to comments.
So, an attractive audience, growing like topsy. All well in blogdom. Of course there's a catch. As blog readers become more numerous, they take on more of the characteristics of the internet audience as a whole. And the internet audience itself, to borrow a phrase, is looking more and more like America. For the moment, the blogs have the best of all worlds. However, as the blogs gain scale, they lose the demographic purity that made them special to begin with.
Gawker sales people tell advertisers that the blog audience is young, rich and influential. It's a reasonable assumption. Blog readers are early adopters, and one would assume that they would have a profile much like the early internet audience.
