The New ‘DigiTal DiviDe’.

How tHe New GeNeratioN of DiGital CoNsumers are traNsformiNG mass CommuNiCatioN?

As the digital world continues to evolve, consumers are increasingly relying on non-traditional platforms for entertainment, news, social interactions, shopping, and other daily activities. This has potentially huge implications for our industry in terms of how people will consume media and come into contact with brand communications. With this in mind, Universal McCann conducted an in-depth study of heavy Internet users to understand the extent to which consumers are using the Internet and its various forms of content.

We conducted our research among people in the 16-49 age group who are frequent users of the Internet (accessed Internet 11+ times in past 7 days). This represents about 31% of the total U.S. population. While the percentage of new technology usage appears to be high, when we look at specific usage in relation to the total population, the figures are in fact much smaller. For example, our research indicates that 14% of heavy Internet users maintain their own blog. However, UM’s proprietary database Media in Mind™ reports that only 4% of the overall population are currently participating in this activity. This is not to detract from the importance of these web applications. 14% of heavy Internet users represent around 6 million U.S. consumers. While this number may be relatively small, it is not insignificant, and these consumers are quite influential. Additionally, all signs indicate this number is on the rise. As the younger consumers mature and those who were too young to take part in this survey reach adulthood, this type of content creation will become
the norm.

This study was conducted and written by Universal McCann’s Research team:
Susan Nathan, SVP, Director of Media Knowledge
Cara Berman, VP, Research Director
Chrystie Kelly, Research Manager

To view report CLICK below (Adobe Acrobat Reader required):

http://universalmccann.com/downloads/papers/The%20New%20Digital%20Divide.pdf