A new study conducted by comScore Networks reveals that blog visitors are more likely to be young, shop online and use a broadband connection. The study was sponsored by Six Apart and Gwaker Media.
Blog visitors are 11 percent more likely than the average Internet user to have incomes of $75,000 or more, and are 30 percent more likely to live in households headed by someone between the ages of 18 and 34, the study found.
During the first quarter, the average blog visitor viewed 77 percent more Web pages than the average Internet user, and spent 23 hours per week online, compared with 13 hours per week for the average user, according to the study. Regarding e-commerce behavior, blog visitors are 30 percent more likely to shop online than the average user.
Cheryl Contee, Assistant Vice President at Issue Dynamics (IDI), raises some good questions about the report on IDI's blog, bloggerrelations.com:
Comscore divides the the blogosphere into 7 categories: Politics/News, "Hipster", Tech, Woman (Authored), Media, Personal and Business. Left off this list are the two giant categories of Sports and Entertainment. Healthcare is an emerging category as well, but somewhat smaller in overall reach today. It seems to me that if Comscore, Six Apart (a major blog host) and Gawker Media (a confederation of blogs in multiple categories) are interested in motivating advertisers, why ignore two target industries?
Contee also takes issue with the "blogs authored by women" category:
I am frankly offended by the categorization of "Woman (Authored)" blogs. Wonkette and Michelle Malkin are given as examples of such blogs, but these are both major political blogs that are more often than not in the top 10-15 blogs. Why should they be separated out from other political blogs? Wonkette is cross-listed but is that because the blog is one of Gawker Media's properties? What does "woman authored" mean exactly? While it is important to discuss the presence of women readers and writers in the blogosphere, surely this type of categorization demeans and trivializes rather than celebrates.
Read "Blogs Attract Young, Wealthy Readers," from PC Magazine.
See also, "50 Million Americans Visited Blogs During the First Quarter 2005, According to New comScore Study," from comScore.
(Full disclosure: Issue Dynamics is a consultant for Amnesty International USA)