June 12, 2006
The Alpha Marketer
According to a recent Burst Media survey, 37.4 percent of teens aged 13-17, say they spend 3-4 hours each day on the internet - this is in addition to school.
Teen males who spend that much time number 39.9 percent while teen females are at 34.7 percent.
Another 17.9 percent say they spend from 2-3 hours online outside of school; 25.1 percent spend 1-2 hours online; and 19.6 percent spend less than an hour a day online. Still the numbers are quite impressive on how important a role the internet is playing with teens.
A common thread that runs through their usage is that the majority of teens are also consuming some other form of media while they are online. That is the key problem to solve in marketing to teen online users. Marketers must come up with compelling ways to minimize the distractions and disruptions.
The strategy for any teen market is to create some type of meeting point where teens can congregate online. The way to do it is to offer numerous subjects and and things of interest that teens are looking for and develop campaigns around that.
Over 60 percent of teens join the social networking sites they visit and create an online profile. The higher percentage are females 67.5 percent while 53.7 are males of those that join.
Chuck Moran, manager of market research for Burst Media adds "Marketers should use the Internet to create a central content point for teens on a variety of subjects and interests. By doing so marketers can then develop integrated marketing campaigns with advertising creative and programs referencing a central platform and working in tandem to get teens' attention."
Other major online activities teens do are play online games, download music, download video clips, create website or personal pages, download cursors and ring tones.
