Most Online Shoppers Read Four or More Reviews Before Purchasing
Online shoppers who spend more than $500 per year take reviews seriously, PowerReviews and the e-tailing group discovered. Based on a survey of 1,200 consumers who shop online at least four times each year and spend $500 per year online, the research companies found 68 percent of those surveyed read at least four reviews before making a purchase, MediaPost reported. Almost one-quarter of those surveyed read eight reviews or more. Only 2 percent of those surveyed said they “never” read reviews in advance of a purchase.
Sources: MediaPost, the e-tailing group, PowerReviews
Women Prefer TV Shows, Men Prefer UGC in Online Video
Women ages 18 – 34 are twice as likely as men to watch streaming video on television Web sites, but men are more than twice as likely to watch video from user-generated content sites such as YouTube, MySpace and more. This is according to Nielsen Online’s VideoCensus service, CNet’s News.com reported. Also, much of network television online viewing is done between noon and 2 p.m. (lunchtime), but most viral video viewing happens overnight, especially on the weekends.
Source: CNet
Media Jobs in Decline: One in Six Gone Since 2000, More in Newspapers
Media jobs fell to a 15-year low in December, “slammed by the slumping newspaper industry,” AdAge reported. Increases in advertising and marketing jobs in the past few years have not been enough to offset job cuts in other areas of media. “It's a different picture in media. Since media employment peaked in dot-com-infused 2000, media companies have eliminated one in six jobs (167,600). Newspapers, TV and radio all cut staffing last year. The only media sectors to add jobs: magazines (up a meager 400 jobs) and internet media companies (up 9,200),” according to AdAge.
Source: AdAge
Magazine Web Sites Grow in Unique Audience, Time Spent
2007 was a good year for magazine-based Web sites, the Magazine Publishers Association reported. In the fourth quarter of 2007, magazine Web sites “averaged 67.5 million unique monthly visitors,” according to the association. “That marks an 8.1% increase over the same period in 2006, when 62.5 million unique visitors logged onto magazine websites. The increase is more than three times the rate of growth for the overall U.S. Internet audience, which rose 2.4% in the fourth quarter. The information, compiled for the first time, is based on a MPA analysis of Nielsen Online-supplied data from 320 consumer magazine brands online.”
Source: Magazine Publishers Association
Survey Says: Financial Tables, Sports Top List of Cut-able Items
Financial tables and sports should be on the chopping block, according to 425 respondents to an unscientific survey on the blog BuzzMachine. More than 43 percent of respondents said the financial tables should be cut in newsrooms that need to make tough budget choices; 21.65 percent said the sports section should be cut, and 8 percent said sports columnists should be cut. Each respondent was able to choose multiple items from the extensive list. Some critics of the survey noted many people purchase a newspaper for the sports section, something BuzzMachine blogger Jeff Jarvis noted in his comments.
“Financial tables are obvious (which is why it’s all the more appalling that all papers haven’t killed them). What fascinates me most is the large number who want to kill sports. I’m one of those who doesn’t read the sports section (you always knew I was neither a real man nor a real American). So I just throw it in the back seat. But sports sections are also expensive to produce — lots of staff — and bring in few endemic advertisers. Granted, some people buy the paper to get the sports section alone,” Jarvis wrote.
Source: BuzzMachine