Wednesday, July 14, 2010

lisa's outbrain blog

this is my wife lisa lacour's blog for outbrain:

http://blog.outbrain.com/ 

There is No “X” Demographic

Jul 14, 2010 at 10:28 AM by llacour 
Yesterday’s iMedia Connection article by Sarah Engel discussed her unscientific study around how moms are using Facebook. Most of what she discovered was all the typical things you would expect around playing games, connecting with friends and family, finding deals, etc., but what was interesting was the mom’s complaints around marketers lumping them into a specific demographic.
Which got me thinking….. I’m one of those moms.  From a demographic standpoint, I fit the mold perfectly…. 30 something (sorry, not gonna reveal that one) with an 18 month old baby who works full time and lives in a major metropolitan city.  But really, I don’t consider myself a stereotypical mom at all.  I don’t respond to the typical banner advertising I see online. Especially those creepy ones that follow me around the web just because I happened to check out a specific product. I don’t visit your normal “mom” sites, I don’t really care about coupons (I just don’t have time) and I’d rather hang out with my friends at the park than spend time online (I do that all day at work).
So, how does an advertiser find me? They put themselves in places where I am actually in the mindset of engaging in something that I’m interested in – which may not have anything to do with my baby (even though I’m always thinking about her and prepared to hit “buy” at any moment). That site could be a site like CNN (which has a mostly male demographic) or a video game website (again, mostly for men). Most media plans wouldn’t target these sites, which means they won’t find me and trust me, I spend just as much money on diapers and other junk as the rest of the moms out there!
Just imagine if they switch their planning process away from targeting a specific demo and focused more on having me discover their product when I’m ready for it. They’d find a lot more of me out there.


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