Comscore Network's Behavior of the Blogosphere Report
Now here is the first detailed analysis (PDF Doc) I have seen that targets and measures the difference between traditional surfers and Blog readers.
By tracking traffic to top blogs, and co-ordinating this data with Top Blog providers, Comscore seems to have been able to somehow slice the blog reading cream from common Internet traffic.
Some interesting finds of note:
- 50 Million U.S. Internet users visited blog sites in the first quarter of 2005. That is roughly 30% of all U.S. Internet users and 1 in 6 of the total U.S. Population.
- Compared to the average Internet User, blog readers are significantly more likely to live in wealthier households, be younger and connect to the Web on Broadband High Speed Connections
- Blog readers also visit nearly twice as many web pages as the Internet average, and they are much more likely to Shop Online.
The data is based on Comscore's “Panel” of 2 Million Internet Users comprised of Home, Work, and University users in ratios that reflect the demographic composition of the general U.S. Internet user population. They all have provided explicit permission to monitor their activities so based on all these factors and the sheer size of the panel the data should be pretty accurate.
The most telling information comes in the form of the profile of blog readers.
ComScore found that blog visitors represent a demographically attractive advertising audience. Blog visitors are disproportionately likely to be affluent, young, and broadband enabled.
This alone provides incredible incentive for Broadband providers to offer a high end blogging tool to their base, where they may take advantage if embedding advertising in the blogs to viral market to this surfer crowd.
Blog visitors are 11 percent more likely than the average Internet user to have incomes of $75,000 or more.
Combine this with a younger demographic as reported above that has a lower likelihood of having any parental expenditures and you have a technically savvy target audience with allot of disposable income.
Blog visitors are 11 percent more likely to access the Internet (from either home or work) using a broadband connect.
The average Blog visitor spent nearly 18,000 minutes or about 23 hours per week online, while the average Internet user spent just over 10,000 minutes or 13 hours per week online.
Blog readers are a heavy Internet surfing demographic. They are more dependent on their broadband connections, and require the additional speed, and better value added features of a good broadband provider than any other Internet user demographic. How do you reach them? Through blogs of course, and as many of them as you can.
The report also found that blog visitors are 30 percent more likely to buy products or services online. While less than 40 percent of the total Internet population made an online purchase in Q1 2005, 51 percent of blog visitors did. The average blog visitor who bought online spent approximately six percent more than he average online buyer.
They shopped online more often and spent more on average than a typical surfer. This is an excellent online demographic to target for selling pretty much anything on the Internet. Offering a blog tool to any large community base will allow you an open door to market to this extremely attractive demographic.
An excellent real life example is a company called Rakuten in Japan who sells a myriad of products and services and who recently started to offer free blogs to incent users to viraly market their wares through the blogs and receive discounts. It's only a matter of time before this same approach starts to take shape with product and service providers across North America.
