Twitter, the current media darling, is not effective with older consumers. Online video such as YouTube, no longer the new kid on the block, is growing its audience across all ages. That’s the bottom line from two recent reports, and useful data for marketers deciding where to invest time/money to motivate Boomers and Beyond.
eMarketer shares the results of LinkedIn/Harris Interactive research on the effectiveness of Twitter. They find quite a gap between the perceptions of advertisers vs. consumers. We note that only 31% of all internet users are familiar with Twitter. And 80% of those 55 or better say they’re not familiar enough with Twitter to form an opinion. Now that’s a gap!
The Pew Internet and American Life Project finds that online video is becoming pervasive, with growth across all age groups.
[The findings] mark an important moment in the evolution of America’s television and movie-viewing habits.
The use of video-sharing sites currently outranks many other headline-snatching internet pastimes among American adults. Watching online videos on sites like YouTube is more prevalent than the use of social networking sites (46% of adult internet users are active on such sites), podcast downloading (19% of internet users do this) and the use of status updating sites like Twitter (11% of internet users do this).
Specifically, the Pew data points to growth in online viewing among “silver surfers.”
Among internet users ages 50-64, 41% now say they watch video on sites like YouTube, which is up from 34% in 2008. Likewise, 27% of wired seniors ages 65 and older now access video on these sites, compared with just 19% who were doing so at this time last year.
More mature consumers, for now, are clearly saying “Make mine video!”
Psst: Have you seen the one where Craig Ferguson explains advertisers’ obsession with youth?
