Tag: Pew Research Center

Pew Online Video Study: 78% Of Adults Watch Online Videos

Posted on by Lab Team

Pew Internet released a study today whose main conclusion was that 78% of adult internet users watch or download videos, which is up from 69% in 2009. This figure includes adults who watch videos on a video-sharing site, watch videos online at all, or adults who download video files onto a computer to watch later. Certainly, online adults under the age of 50, as well as non-adults under that age do lead the charge in online video consumption. It’s nonetheless important for marketers to note key distinctions about these age groups: younger users are drawn to music, comedy, and animated videos, while adult men are more likely to be found watching political, sports, and educational (or how-to) videos. Another interesting demographic conclusion: the higher the household income, the more video watching occurs; at $75,000+, 70% of adults watch online videos, while at $30,000-$74,999, only 54% watch. 

While these results aren’t intrinsically groundbreaking, they’re important to study, particularly for digital marketers who are looking to target specific age groups with pitches and campaigns. Ultimately, it seems as though comedic videos are the most universally accepted across gender, age, and income brackets, while more niche categories should be used to target specific age brackets and audiences. For the full details, click through to the report. 

Pew Research: 70% of Americans Have Broadband

Posted on by Lab Team

A new Pew Research study has been released that indicates 70% of Americans have broadband access at home. Economic factors seem to be the greatest determinants of likelihood to subscribe to broadband at home, but the study did not account for adults who opt to forgo home internet access a because they have access at work, potentially skewing broader access statistics.  After broadband subscriptions dipped in 2010, the numbers continue to rise, with the Pew statistics indicating an unsurprising all-time high broadband subscribership.

Teens Share More Information On Social Media

Posted on by Lab Team

According to a study by Pew Internet, Teens now share more information about themselves on social media sites than they have in the past. At the same time, though, they are more protective about privacy issues, and take privacy-protective actions. Contrarily, Teens do not express concerns about third-parties accessing their data, and only 9% of teens say that they are “very” concerned. Teens are sharing more information about themselves than they were in 2006: 91% post a photo of themselves; 71% post their school name, and 53% post their email addresses. At the same time, 60% have their profiles set to private, and report high levels of confidence in being able to manage their privacy settings. Whether this view is naive or not remains to be seen, but what is sure is that Teens are sharing data at an increasing rate, and believe that this data is at least partially secure from third parties. Companies like Ghostery have begun to expose the third-party tracking and the extent to which it stretches, but for the most part the population remains relatively unaware of the extent of third-party tracking. 

Pew Study: Twitter Isn’t Great At Revealing Public Opinion

Posted on by Lab Team

According to a new survey by Pew Research Center, Twitter can’t be relied upon to gauge public opinion. The reaction to big national and political news on the social network differs widely from the responses to widely-distributed surveys. More specifically, Twitter reactions happen to be more Liberal than the national average; for instance, reactions to the federal court ruling the California same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional were generally positive on Twitter, while across the board they were more mixed. So what does this mean? It just means that those who Tweet, particularly those who Tweet about the news, aren’t necessarily representative of the public at large and are instad their own demographic: mostly young and left-leaning. 

Pew Study Finds One In Five U.S. Internet Users Has Ditched Facebook, While 27% Of Current Users Plan To Reduce Time In 2013

Posted on by Lab Team

Facebook currently has a stranglehold on the social networking habits of America: two thirds of those online in the US are on Facebook, as compared to only 20% on LinkedIn and 16% on Twitter. But today, the Pew Internet & American Life Project released a report titled Coming and going on Facebook that highlights a pervasive sense of dissatisfaction spreading through Facebook users.

Based on telephone surveys of 1,006 American adults, Pew found that one in five online adult Americans who do not currently use Facebook said that they have used it in the past, suggesting that they’ve given up on the service. They also found that two-thirds of current Facebook users said that in some time in the past they have taken a voluntary break from the site for several weeks or longer.

The (relative) bad news is that a relatively large proportion of users is evidently finding Facebook time-draining, boring or annoying enough to have given it up for weeks at a time — still, despite a sense of dissatisfaction, these people ended up going back for more. But the most worrying statistic is that 27% of current Facebook users say that, in the future, they plan to spend less time on the site, and just 3% said they want to spend more time there. This is all part
of the population struggling to come to terms with an increasingly social landscape, but these trends will be important to watch for advertisers and tech startups alike.