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entertainment sites
Experienced users who click ads and buy online
By Marty Beard
The internet affords a wealth of information about sports, music, games, TV and movies, and each category attracts its own set of devotees.
Yet while there are differences among visitors to these five categories of entertainment sites, they share many similar attributes, according to a recent report from Fulcrum Analytics.
Visitors to entertainment sites are more likely than the average internet user to click on ads, buy goods online, and pay for content.
They also are frequent visitors to sites in the other entertainment sectors.
"Someone who uses one type of entertainment content--a music user for example--is very likely to use other types of entertainment content as well," says the report’s author, Fulcrum analyst Ben Cutler.
"That should be common sense to most marketers. Basically, a movie user is more likely to use games than your average internet user."
The reason for this, according to Cutler, is that going online for entertainment represents a fairly advanced online activity, and advanced users tend to be interested in a variety of entertainment available on the web.
Internet newbies typically start with email and graduate to more advanced surfing before they become regular music downloaders or shoppers.
The savvier and more experienced an internet user becomes, the more he or she tends to feel secure using the web.
"We’ve generally found that people who have been online for a longer amount of time are more comfortable with the internet in general," Cutler says.
"They are also more likely to be more comfortable clicking on an ad or more comfortable inputting their credit card number into the computer so that they can subscribe to a site or make a purchase."
Music is far and away the most popular type of online entertainment content, the report says.
Some 42.7 million adult internet users partake of music online, with half of those downloading music and the rest engaging in activities such as visiting bands’ and artists’ web sites and buying CDs.
Some 33.6 million online adults go online for movie-related information, and 32.9 million people log on for game-related reasons.
About 26.6 million people log on for sport news and information, and 22.7 million go online seeking television-related information.
Those five types of entertainment users behave a tiny bit differently when it comes to certain internet activities, however.
Movie, game, and TV site users are more inclined than others to subscribe to online content. Nineteen percent of both types have subscribed to fee-only material, as have 20 percent of TV site visitors. Fourteen percent of online sports users pay for content, as do 16 percent of music users.
The reason is that web sites associated with TV, movies and games often offer compelling content that users can’t get elsewhere for free.
"The nature of gaming is such that it lends itself very well to the subscription model because people get so addicted and dependent on it that it’s something they’re willing to continue paying for," Cutler says.
People who go online for TV-related content are more likely to click on an ad. They click on an average of 5.7 ads a month.
The least likely people to click on ads are devoted sports users, who click on just 4.7 ads per month.
TV content users make up the smallest of the five categories, and they are the most experienced group.
Cutler believes that consumers of online TV content are more likely to click on ads because they’re more experienced users.
Additionally, experienced web users are more willing to part with personal data.
"People will visit music sites earlier in their internet life cycle than they would TV sites, and what that means for TV sites is that the people visiting them right now are a little bit more experienced in using the internet, on average, than are music site and movie site visitors."
Ultimately, Cutler advises that marketers bear in mind that there are links between online and offline activity.
"A lot of entertainment content is geared toward making money right way online. But that’s a little bit more in the future.
"Right now, in the present, probably the best use of the powerful reach that a lot of these entertainment categories have is to spur offline activities."
March 13, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
-Marty Beard is a staff writer for Media Life
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