Check out eMarketer’s latest demographic coverage, which spans every age group and their activity online. eMarketer clients have access to these reports and hundreds more, easily searchable in our unique digital intelligence portal. To learn more about becoming an eMarketer client, click here.

US Social Network Usage: 2011 Demographic and Behavioral Trends
In 2011, 63.7% of US internet users will use social networks on a regular basis, amounting to nearly 148 million people. Although the pace of growth will be less dramatic in the next few years than it was in 2009 and 2010, usage will remain strong and shows no sign of declining. Marketers and media companies alike now know that in order to reach their audience, they must have a presence on social networks.

• How many people in the US use social networks?
• Which age groups are most active and engaged?
• How does social network usage impact email?
• How will mobile social network usage grow and change?

Demographic Profile—Teens
Teens live, eat, sleep and breathe the internet. More than 95% are using the internet in 2011, according to eMarketer. They are the avant-garde of internet users, and their media habits have implications that will cascade down to the rest of the population.

• What are the demographics of teens?
• How do teenagers spend their time with media?
• What do they do online?
• How are they using mobile phones?

Demographic Profile—Seniors
The 2010 US Census counted 40 million seniors in the US, comprising 13% of the total population. Traditional media continues to dominate seniors’ media habits, but the internet is quickly increasing reach, expected to hit 56.0% penetration by 2015.

• What are the population and demographics of seniors in the US?
• What are the key media habits among seniors?
• How many seniors are online?
• What are seniors doing when they are online?
• How many seniors use mobile phones and what do they do with them?

Demographic Profile—Children
Today’s kids are more wired than any other generation, using computers before they can read or ride a bike. The number of internet users in the US ages 11 and under will climb from 20.2 million in 2011 to 25.7 million by 2015.

• What are the demographics of children?
• How are kids different from other consumers?
• How do children spend their time with media?
• What are children’s online activities?
• How does mobile fit into their lives?

Blacks Online: Young, Mobile and Social
The infamous “digital divide” is finally showing real signs of narrowing, as more and more research gives evidence of rising home broadband usage among black adults. Earlier research already showed this market owned more cell phones—and used more of their features—than other demographic groups.

• When should marketers target black internet users?
• What forms of social media are most popular with black millennials?
• Do black internet users respond to online ads?
• How different are black millennials from their parents and grandparents?

Moms Who Blog: A Marketing Powerhouse
Moms who blog have become important marketing partners and powerful allies, spreading the word about products and services to the 32 million moms who go online in the US. In total, there are 3.9 million women with children under 18 who write blogs, covering a wide variety of subjects, including parenting, couponing, travel, automobiles and technology. While they share one thing in common—having children—they are a diverse group, which is a benefit and a challenge for marketers.

• How many US moms read and write blogs?
• What can marketers gain from creating relationships with moms who blog?
• How do blogger-outreach programs intersect with other kinds of social media marketing?
• What best practices should marketers follow when engaging with moms who blog?

Millennials Online: Marketing to a Moving Target
Millennials are the first generation to be raised with online media. As young adults, ages 18 to 34, these digital natives quickly adopt new technologies, then adapt them to fit their lifestyles. Many marketers are struggling to find the best ways to use social media to reach millennials. The vast majority who choose to measure fans, friends and followers as a metric of success are bound to be disappointed. Millennials value experiences and engagement with brands, and will talk about those things within their social circles.

• What do millennials think about online advertising and marketing?
• What media most appeals to this digital generation?
• Which is more valuable to a brand marketer, a real customer or a Facebook fan?
• As they grow older, how will their use of the internet change?

This is only a fraction of the intelligence eMarketer clients have access to on a daily basis. Click here to learn more about becoming an eMarketer client.

The news may be unpredictable, but its appeal to consumers is not: 92% of consumers use multiple platforms to get news on a typical day, according to the Pew Research Center.

As I point out in my new demographic report “The Digital News Audience: 24/7 Participation,” these highly engaged consumers see news as a form of social currency and even as a civic obligation. Their need to keep up with current events has them searching out digital news throughout the day, checking in with more than one outlet on more than one device.

Pew found that 75% of US adults got their news from one or more traditional media “yesterday” literally, the day before the survey was taken, and 44% used one or more digital platforms.

While online advertising has now surpassed overall newspaper ad spending, according to eMarketer estimates released December 20, newspaper and other news sites are still a viable place to advertise.

For marketers, the appeal of the online news audience is in its demographics: predominantly male, between 30 and 64 years, and well-educated, according to Pew.

More young adults ages 18 to 24 check out online news than seniors ages 65 and older, too.

Brand marketers looking to target young, educated males would do well to use digital news platforms and email rather than social networks. News sites are also good places to find educated women in their 30s and 40s who have careers and children—and very little time to spend on social networking relative to younger online females.

Social media offers brand marketers creative ways to reach the news audience, but a distinctly different one. Here, females are more likely than males to get news on social sites, and a younger audience is posting and re-posting links to various news stories.

They see social media playing a vital role for monitoring news: 90.4% of social media users told TEKGroup International that these channels are important or somewhat important for following the news. Of course, the sample was comprised solely of social media users, which does color the results depending on one’s perspective.

The importance to marketers is that this audience is very, very interested in tracking news via social channels.

The downside in news sites for marketers is the volatility of the news itself. While online news sites attract many internet users, marketers can find their brand messages appearing alongside some very unflattering content. To counter that, marketers should have a contingency clause in place that requires online publishers to remove or reposition ads away from adverse stories.

The bottom line: Online news sites are a proven place to attract males, young people and women in their 30s and 40s. Many younger women look to social sites for their news.

Millennials can be a tricky target for marketers. Despite the fact that, according to eMarketer, more than 82% of US internet users 18 to 34 use social networks at least monthly (and that percentage is likely near 100% in target markets), about 84% of millennials say they don’t notice ads on social sites, according to the Lubin School of Business.

So what are the best ways for marketers to penetrate the seemingly impenetrable millennial market? According to a recent survey by the Pivot Conference, the answer may be cause marketing. About two-thirds of the respondents to the Pivot poll agreed that green and socially conscious motivations were one of the top factors that differentiated millennials from other demographic and psychographic groups.

That perception falls in line with research the eMarketer Daily reported on from agency Cone. While interest in cause-related marketing grew among the general population between 2008 and 2010, social and environmental causes had a significantly greater influence on the purchase decisions of millennials than other generations. If marketers are looking for 18- to 34-year-olds’ “susceptibility” to branding, social and green issues are a good place to start, with 85% saying they would switch brands because of such marketing and 73% saying they would try a new brand. According to Cone, moms are also a prime target of cause-related campaigns.

Asked about what kinds of cause marketing brands could provide that would entice them, millennials were most interested in ways they could learn about issues (86%), buy products where a portion of the sale supports a good cause (85%) or donate money to a nonprofit identified by a brand (84%). With that in mind, brands that show a deep commitment to their chosen cause and facilitate learning and changes in a community are more likely than others to succeed. Do you agree?

To listen and watch playback of the webinar, Tips for Reaching & Engaging the Elusive Millennial with eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey, click here. You can view the PowerPoint deck below.

Join eMarketer CEO Geoff Ramsey to find out about:

• The fluid ways these digital natives spend their media time
• What they really think about advertising
• Why their deep involvement with social media does not mean deep trust
  of social networks
• What brands need to know about the research and purchase habits of these
  device agnostics
• What are the marketing techniques that fail with millennials—and the
  ones that succeed

About Geoff Ramsey
Geoff Ramsey is one of the internet’s most exciting digital marketing visionaries. As CEO and co-founder of eMarketer, Geoff is on the cutting edge of new research statistics, trends and best practices, covering every aspect of marketing in the digital age. He is frequently quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, CNN, Bloomberg Businessweek and Advertising Age.

A highly regarded speaker with an engaging presentation style, Geoff speaks at major digital, media and corporate events around the globe, including the American Association of Advertising Agencies, Association of National Advertisers (ANA), Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

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Today kicks off National Hispanic Heritage Month in the US, so we decided to take a look at a few of the trends and tips we’ve seen lately about Hispanic media usage and how marketers can reach them.

eMarketer estimates there are nearly 30 million Hispanic internet users in the US this year. Hispanics are underrepresented online, with less than 60% accessing the internet at least monthly, compared with 76% of non-Hispanic whites and 63.8% of blacks. And according to June 2010 data from the Associated Press and Univision, online Hispanics spend more time with English-language content on the web than with Spanish-language sites and information.

Hispanics were also significantly more likely to report spending no time using the Spanish-language internet, at 53%, vs. just 32% who said they spent no time on English-language sites.

This research falls in line with earlier studies, such as one published in 2009 by Ipsos that found 59% of Hispanic men and 51% of Hispanic women preferred English on the internet. Even 10% of respondents whose primary language was Spanish would rather go online in English, according to that study.

But attitudinal research shows that marketers must still reach out to Hispanics in Spanish. Experian Simmons found in December 2009 that more than two in five Hispanics felt Spanish-language advertising is a sign that companies respect their heritage, and nearly as many said they were more loyal toward companies that show such respect. Spanish-language ads were unsurprisingly more important to Spanish-dominent consumers than to fluent English speakers, but solid percentages of all Hispanics care when marketers make the effort to connect with them through their own language and culture.

That also means Spanish-language marketing content should not appear second best. Unfortunately, however, that is increasingly the case.

As eMarketer senior analyst Lisa Phillips wrote in May, “many of the Spanish-version sites are lagging behind their English counterparts. According to AOL’s Hispanic Cyberstudy, one-quarter of Hispanic Internet users say they could not do all the same things on a Spanish-language site that they could do on the corresponding English-language site.”

Bottom line:

If you are going to offer online content in Spanish, make sure it is as robust as your English-language site. Hispanic internet users are checking out both, making comparisons—and commenting to their online friends and families. Your brand’s image could be tarnished by the very effort you think is helping to reach a wider audience.