I was reading in Advertising Age Cartier, a brand better known for diamond necklaces and $10,000 watches, will advertise its latest collection, Love by Cartier on MySpace,
Now this is not the first time that a luxury brand has hooked up with a social network. Last year I blogged about how Neiman Marcus had picked YouTube as a place to publicize its 100-year anniversary.
What surprised me where comments by Travis Katz, managing director-international operations for MySpace.
Travis was talking abut MySpace demographics and he claimed that:
“There’s this misperception in the market about MySpace being a youth site, a site for teens. But 85% of our audience in the U.S. is over 18, and 40% of all moms in U.S. are on MySpace.” He claims that MySpace reaches more people making $100,000-plus than other social-network competitors, such as Facebook and Yahoo 360.
Now I am sure that Travis Katz has access to much better demographic data that I do but a couple of his claims I find are hard to believe. Are 40% of ALL moms in the U.S. really on MySpace? Do an informal poll of your female co-workers and ask them whether they use MySpace. My guess is that it is a less less than 40%. In the past MySpace has had a problem with bots creating tens of thousands of users profiles which makes me wonder how many of this 40% are active users?
I have some skepticism about the second claim that MySpace reaches more people making $100,000-plus than other social-network competitors, such as Facebook and Yahoo 360. I see a lot of businesses actively working on using Facebook because of the demographics. Other than Cartier can you name another luxury brand that is targeting MySpace users? You would think that with users with that kid of earning power that the Financial companies, luxury auto manufactures and Jewelers would be all over MySpace. That they are not makes me really skeptical of Travis Katz claims.
What do you think? Is MySpace the destination of choice for soccer moms and the rich?
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Actually those numbers seem right. According to our studies we have found that ALL moms on the internet in the US average to roughly 30-45% on myspace AND facebook. those were the stats, as for all soccer moms and the rich,? No comment..
I’m with you on this one. All of the demographic information I have seen (including the media kit info from MySpace) says the audience is younger and less affluent than some of the other social networking sites. Take a look at what Quantcast is saying for MySpace demos… http://www.quantcast.com/myspace.com.
I will say that MySpace has HUGE reach. So, if only 19% of MySpace visitors make over $100k per year, that’s still roughly 14 million people!
It will be interesting to see how the campaign works for them…
Ahhhh…statistics and I hate to say it but both sides of this are probably right…and the truth is somewhere in between…
For example…Myspace and many other sites have a self-disclosed income, gender, and age criterion when you sign up. If that’s where they are getting their data then that’s probably what it says – those who sign up are such-and-such a demographic and such-and-such age etc.
The problem is that it isn’t verifiable data from any other source… So, like many things on the internet this may not be all that it seems. S0o while I might identify and show up in the database as a 45 year old Mom who makes over $100,000 a year… in reality I am an underpaid teenager working minimum wage.
Self-disclosure is the bane of social statisticians everywhere…because well, people lie and they especially lie about basic facts. Some fascinating studies of online dating show that this income is, in fact, one of the “big three” people lie about on dating sites (the others being “marital status” and “age”).
So it surprises me that marketing folks would jump so quickly into a pool based on data that may or may not be all that accurate.
What is the percentage of single moms?
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