|
|
|
and web advertisers are noticing
As more females surf, targeting catches on
By Jeremy Schlosberg
Online advertisers are beginning to respond to the fact that women represent nearly half of the internet population, according to a study by AdRelevance.
What’s more, says the report, web sites that seek female audiences tend to advertise on sites with a higher concentration of female users.
The report, entitled "Wired Women," begins by noting that as of the third quarter of 1999, females represented 49 percent of the web audience—a percentage that is expected to surpass males by the end of year.
Once on the web, men and women tend to go to different sorts of places, as the report reveals (see charts). Using data from parent company Media Metrix, AdRelevance notes that women gravitate towards toy sites, women’s portals, greeting card sites, retail savings, and health sites.
Men prefer sites with technical content, financial information, sports news and information, and general news.
Certain types of companies are beginning to concentrate their online advertising on women’s sites, notes the report.
Pet supply vendors, personal-care product manufacturers, department stores, home and garden product vendors, and kid and family web sites are the five leading types of advertisers when it comes to share of ad impressions on women’s sites.
Of those five all but department stores are significantly overdelivered on women’s sites compared to the web as a whole (see chart).
The report also contains information about the online advertising habits of the web’s top 10 female-oriented web sites. These sites tend to advertise with bursts of impressions delivered in three- or four-week intervals. At their peak, says the report, all 10 sites aiming at women rank among the top 20 percent of web advertisers.
Two sites—OnHealth and iVillage—ranked in the top 1 percent of all online advertisers during peaks in their cycles in the last quarter of 1999.
When advertising their own sites, the web’s most popular sites with women tend not surprisingly to advertise on other sites frequented by women, according to the report.
Women.com led the way as the most target-conscious of the women’s sites; according to AdRelevance, 66 percent of their November impressions were delivered to women 18 and older—which means Women.com reached 59 percent more women than it would have if it had bought advertising across an average assortment of sites, where women 18 and older comprise 42 percent of the audience.
The report raises an eyebrow at the ad strategy of Coolsavings.com, a coupon, rebate and promotion site. While reaching an audience that’s 65 percent women, Coolsavings.com’s ad impressions in November reached an audience that was only 34 percent women. AdRelevance says this suggests CoolSavings may be seeking to broaden its user base.
It may also mean that the site isn’t targeting effectively.
The CoolSavings situation highlights one potential problem with the AdRelevance report--a tendency towards questionable analysis of its own data.
For instance, the report looks at the chart on the demographics of women’s sites’ media buys and concludes that "women’s sites are advertising mainly on sites with a higher than average concentration of women visitors."
Well, sort of. But the numbers show that only Women.com is truly targeting with any vigor, with impressions being delivered to an audience that was 66 percent women 18 and above. Rival iVillage managed only to deliver its ads to an audience that was 49 percent women 18 and above.
AdRelevance says this still means iVillage is delivering impressions to an audience that is comprised of 18 percent more adult women than the overall web audience has. But for a site so clearly focused on adult women, this doesn’t seem to illustrate a particularly effective targeting effort.
That said, it could well be that iVillage is not trying to target that strictly. Advertising on big portal sites, which don’t skew towards women, may be part of a sensible and effective media plan for iVillage, or other women sites.
It just doesn’t prove, as the report says, that women audiences on the web are "actively sought out and catered to" by the media plans of the web’s top women’s sites.
| WEB SITES WITH HIGH CONCENTRATION OF WOMEN USERS |
||
| Ranked by percentage | ||
Site |
Unique Users (‘000) (women) |
% Women |
| kbkids.com | 1912 |
73% |
| ivillage sites | 2440 |
69% |
| women.com sites | 2089 |
69% |
| freeshop.com | 1787 |
66% |
| coolsavings.com | 2026 |
65% |
| toysrus.com | 2901 |
65% |
| valupage.com | 1723 |
65% |
| egreetings.com | 1848 |
64% |
| onhealth.com | 1812 |
63% |
| etoys.com | 2887 |
62% |
| Source:
AdRelevance, citing Media Metrix Top 100 Web Sites, Women 18+, November 1999 |
||
| WEB SITES WITH LOW CONCENTRATION OF WOMEN USERS |
||
| Ranked by percentage | ||
Site |
Unique Users (‘000) (women) |
% Women |
| nfl.com | 723 |
26% |
| espn | 1323 |
27% |
| sportsline usa | 1063 |
32% |
| hp.com | 891 |
33% |
| zdnet | 2423 |
33% |
| money central | 960 |
34% |
| cnet.com | 2794 |
35% |
| usatoday.com | 887 |
35% |
| broadcast.com inc. | 1266 |
36% |
| windowsmedia | 1308 |
36% |
| Source:
AdRelevance, citing Media Metrix Top 100 Web Sites, Women 18+, November 1999 |
||
| TOP
10 WOMEN’S SITES RANKED BY FEMALE-ORIENTED AD TARGETING |
|||
| Advertiser | Impressions |
% Women |
Index |
| Women.com | 7.1M |
66 |
159 |
| iVillage sites | 41M |
49 |
118 |
| Valupage.com | 19M |
48 |
116 |
| Kbkids.com | 3.1M |
48 |
116 |
| Etoys.com | 8.3M |
47 |
113 |
| Toysrus.com | 3.5M |
47 |
113 |
| Egreetings.com | 1.9M |
46 |
111 |
| Onhealth.com | 69M |
45 |
108 |
| Freeshop.com | 4.1M |
44 |
106 |
| Coolsavings.com | 8.3M |
34 |
82 |
| Source: AdRelevance, citing Media Metrix Top 100 Web Sites, women 18+, November
1999 |
|||
| ADVERTISER
SHARE OF IMPRESSIONS ON WOMEN’S SITES, BY INDUSTRY SEGMENT |
||
| industry segment | women’s sites | all sites |
| Pet supply vendors | 14.6% | 0.4% |
| Personal care product manufacturers | 7.4% | 0.4% |
| Department Stores | 7.3% | 9.0% |
| Home & Garden Product Vendors | 7.0% | 0.5% |
| Kids & Family Web Sites | 5.7% | 0.2% |
| Full Service Telecommunications | 5.1% | 2.4% |
| Software Manufacturers | 4.0% | 1.9% |
| Drug & Toiletry Vendors | 3.7% | 2.2% |
| Health & Fitness Web Sites | 3.4% | 1.9% |
| Book, Movie & Music Vendors | 3.1% | 1.5% |
| Source:
AdRelevance |
||
-Jeremy Schlosberg is the senior editor for
new media.