Social networking giants were always surrounded with a perception that they are attracting tons of younger audience which seems to have taken a back-seat after a demographics report compiled by iStrategyLabs for Facebook was made public.
The numbers are for US market only but may be used to convey the real situation being played out in other major markets like Europe. The numbers where mostly compiled from the data available for Social Ads platform.
The Pointers by the compiled report figures user data comparison in US market between 4th jan – 4th july 2009 respectively:
- 71.9 Million Total US users an increase of 70.8% over the last six months.
- The ratio of female to male is 55:40 (5% unknown)
- The growth in below 17 age bracket is 24.2% whereas in 18-24 age bracket it is just 4.8%.
- The highest growth is registered in 55+ age bracket which stood at 513% compared to growth of 190% in 35-54 age bracket.
- In terms of education levels, high school and college students accounted for the largest drop in users, at 16.5 percent and 21.7 percent, respectively.
The impressive growth in US could also be gauged by its recent attainment of Numero Uno position. The numbers look pretty bad when it comes to youth audience and more and more oldies seem to be joining the platform. This shows that the youth market atleast in the US for facebook seems to be a saturated segment.
The higher than anticipated growth in older age bracket may not be that bad after looking at the Ad premium which sites like Linkedin charge. This may also help facebook to gain brownie points with advertisers as they accumulate influential audience in terms of spending.
WATBlog studied Indian demographics as obtained through Social Ads platform on facebook:
- Total 3.3 Million users in India
- Male to female audience ratio of 66:33
User count in age bracket:
- 13-17 age audience: 279,020 people
- 18-24 age audience: 1,525,800 people
- 25-34 age audience: 1,237,020 people
- 35-54 age audience: 362,840 people
- 55+ age audience: 50,880 people
Indian audience demographics suggest the dominance of site among male audience compared to female. It also shows the influence of 18-24 and 25-34 age audience, mostly highly educated and employed in Indian market and very low growth in 55+ age bracket. The numbers for 35-54 age bracket could also be called impressive as India is always perceived as monopoly of youth audience.
