How to reach those elusive online teens
The number of teens online will plateau at about 22 million in 2007, up from 19.6 million in 2004, but those teens will continue to use the Internet primarily for communications, entertainment, and research, says JupiterResearch in a recent report.
Only 35% of 2,140 teens surveyed listed shopping as a top online activity. That compares with homework and research for school (84%), receiving and sending e-mail (79%), using instant messaging (67%), playing online games (59%), and reading music news online (37%).
Other top activities included visiting movie sites (31%), watching movie trailers or clips (30%), listening to streamed music (28%) and viewing personal web pages or weblogs.
Teens tend to buy less online than adults because they have lower levels of credit card adoption and discretionary income, according to Jupiter. They also spend less time online than adults—10 hours per week versus 16 hours.
However, teenagers spend increasing amounts of time online as they age, Jupiter says. The typical 17-year-old spends 12 hours per week online while the typical 13-year-old spends only 7 hours per week online.
Because teens are an elusive audience for Internet retailers, marketers should focus on sites where they congregate, such as MySpace.com, LiveJournal, Xanga, and AZLyrics.com, Jupiter says. Those sites have more than 1 million teen users who represent more than 20% of the total audience.
Online teens also spend the most time at community and portal sites, such as MSN and Yahoo, Jupiter says.
But teens’ interest in the Internet may be waning. Of the 19 popular online activities for teens since 2002, 14 have trended downward. That may be due to teens’ shifting some of their communications to mobile phones from e-mail and instant messaging, Jupiter says. The percentage of online teens who own or use cell phones grew to 52% in 2004 from 41% in 2002.
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