Lately there’s been quite a bit of discussion about whether or not Twitter is being widely adopted by younger users. Several months back we posted on our blog about the surprising older skew among visitors to Twitter.com, which perhaps originally set the stage for this debate.

Last week, Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times also weighed in on the subject in her article, “Who’s Driving Twitter’s Popularity? Not Teens.” While I found the article to be an interesting read that explores the very real reasons behind some teens’ apparent aversion to Twitter, I thought it only captured half the story. What it accurately depicted is the notion that teens were indeed slow to jump on board and that Twitter definitely defied the early adopter model in attracting primarily users age 35 and older in the beginning.

But as the Twitter audience has mushroomed in recent months – to 21 million U.S. visitors in July 2009 (note: this number represents visitors to the Twitter.com website and does not include API or mobile Twitter usage) – the younger age groups are the ones flooding in the fastest. Here is a depiction of Twitter’s growth by age segment over the past year.

U.S. Unique Visitor (000) Trend (Source: comScore Media Metrix)

Clearly we can see that the number of visitors from every age segment is growing, which is not surprising considering that the total audience has grown 27-fold in the past year.

But if we visualize the demographic changes another way, the shifting composition becomes more apparent. Here we see that the share of visitors to Twitter under the age of 35 is increasing at a breakneck pace. The most notable positive shifts are evident among the 12-17 and 18-24 year old segments, which are coming at the expense of the 35+ segments.

Share of Audience Trend (Source: comScore Media Metrix)

We can clearly see how the demographic composition is shifting, but what this graph still doesn’t tell us is whether or not these age segments are visiting Twitter in higher or lower proportion relative to their use of the Internet as a whole. The way to demonstrate these changes is by looking at the composition index over time. The composition index tells us how a group is represented relative to what you would expect given their total Internet composition, with an index of 100 indicating average representation.

In this depiction, it’s evident that 12-17 and 18-24 year olds had mostly under-indexed during most of the course of the past year, but in recent months they had begun to over-index. In fact, it is now the youngest segments that have the highest average representation on Twitter, while the 35-54 and 55+ year olds now under-index where they had previously over-indexed. Quite an interesting turn of events.

Composition Index Trend (Source: comScore Media Metrix)

So what explains this phenomenon? After all, it is pretty rare to see demographic shifts this pronounced occur over such a short period of time. I think that during the early adopter period back in 2008, Twitter was first gaining notoriety in business settings and via news outlets (particularly on CNN), which resulted in an older-skewing early adopter profile. But as Twitter began to filter more into the mainstream, along with it came a culture of celebrity as Shaq, Britney Spears and Ashton Kutcher joined the ranks of the Twitterati.

In April, there was a well-chronicled race between Ashton Kutcher and CNN to see who would be the first to reach 1 million followers. Despite trailing for much of the race, Kutcher pulled ahead in the final hours to grab the illustrious crown pulling off what once seemed like an unlikely upset. But maybe this event was subtly hinting at something more significant brewing at Twitter. Perhaps it was a sign of the impending youth invasion.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that around the time of Kutcher’s improbable victory, we first saw signs of younger users beginning to make their move onto Twitter. This event raised Twitter’s profile even further, which attracted more and more celebrities to the phenomenon, which, in turn, attracted even more young users, creating a virtuous cycle. Very quickly, younger users had gone from being the clear minority to the challenging for the majority.

So that’s where we’re at today: Twitter is most definitely popular among younger users and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. They are fueling its continued growth and pushing it ever closer to achieving critical mass. If that happens, it will be the first example I can think of where the younger demographics were not the critical early adopters of a new Internet technology yet still played a vital role in its adoption curve.

But it won’t be the last.

It’s occurred to me as of late that the online video conundrum – simply put, the fact that online video advertising growth is not tracking at the same rate as that of online video consumption – is in many ways self-inflicted. While there are several reasons for the slow shift in ad spend, I can’t help but think that one of the biggest is the apparent disconnect between the way agencies and their brands want to work with producers and how producers expect to work with agencies.

I recently moderated a discussion at the LATV conference about this very topic and wanted to share some thoughts…

On the panel titled “Digital: Show Me the Content: Online Video from the Media Buyer and Brand Perspective” were five people from the agency world, all of whom have had successful forays into original video and branded content campaigns. The audience, on the other hand, was largely composed of original content producers and writers, mostly from the traditional TV and film world. The unanimous agreement among the panelists was that the huge barrier to working with original content producers (assuming the agency had already overcome the barrier of convincing their client to invest in video), was the lack of understanding of how brands and agencies work and their expectations of the agency-producer relationship.

If you think about it, this shouldn’t be too surprising. After all, the video industry exploded without a business model, and then decided that advertising support was how it was going to deliver on its potential. Agencies and advertisers were told to quickly catch up, without much evidence of the value of online video. At the same time, video producers and publishers saw this uncharted territory as a “big party” happening at the brands. They showed up with all their friends, the circus and pyrotechnics, and knocked on brand advertisers’ doors with the good news, to which brand advertisers responded blankly and fairly, “who are you and what are you doing here?”

Online video represents a different paradigm from the traditional TV development model. This new model is much closer to the world of product placement and brand integrations. Whereas an independent producer in the TV world would find it very typical to pitch several fully-baked ideas, this is not the case in today’s new world of original web video. It no longer cuts it for a content developer or producer to simply pitch an idea and run with it, without considering how a brand might fit into the piece. Agencies and brands want to be a part of the creative process so they can ensure the brand is being fully integrated into the story in an authentic way. They want the producer to truly understand the brand essence and broader brand objectives while allowing their agency to be more iterative.

This disconnect between the agencies and content producers is certainly one of the factors contributing to the slow shift of marketing dollars to the online video space. The conversations we had at LATV help bring these two sides closer together, which is why I wanted to continue the discussion here.

So, what are the key takeaways? How can we bridge this gap to create a more harmonious union between the two stakeholders? The message to producers from my agency-packed panel was simple: Content developers and producers must find ways to identify true synergies between a brand (its essence and objectives) and a particular media experience. Know the value you bring to the table and express it to agencies using quantifiable evidence (research, research, research!). Who is your audience? What will the distribution strategy be? What is the fallback in case you are not able to deliver the audience that you promised to the brands? In TV, you have make-goods. In video, what’s your proposed equivalent?

And finally, I think we all recognize that relationship-building is critical. There are no shortcuts to building strong relationships with agencies – or with anyone for that matter. Any producer, whether from the traditional or new media genre, understands that these relationships are built on trust over time, and a few solid credits under your belt also go a long way in proving in advance that you’re going to be able to deliver.

If the content producers and agencies can really begin to collaborate and see eye-to-eye, it will result in creating more integrated and compelling advertising efforts that will drive eyeballs and engagement. When that begins to happen, the trickle of advertising dollars to online video will become a flood and the medium will begin to fulfill its true potential.

The digital world is evolving at a rapid rate, and search marketing is no exception. I was fortunate enough to be on a panel recently at Search Engine Strategies (SES) in San Jose titled: “The Future of Search: Where to Next?”, the purpose of which was to speculate on the roles search marketing might play in the coming years, and how it will evolve along the way. Each panelist was asked to discuss three of their own predictions for the future of search, and I thought it would be valuable to share mine with readers of the comScore blog.

Prediction #1: Searcher Intent Will Not be Judged by Destinations Alone

For the past several years, most of the search industry has held to the belief that Web searchers’ intent can best be determined by the destination of their click. In other words, the theory holds that the best way to determine what a Web user was originally searching for is to examine the site he or she visited after clicking on a link from the search results.

For example, if a person types in “Chicago Bears,” their ‘search intent’ would be determined by the site the searcher chose to visit after considering the various search results suggested. However, the searcher could end up visiting a variety of sites, e.g. the Chicago Bears website to purchase apparel, Ticketmaster.com to buy game tickets or a sports blog with the latest news and updates on the team, etc. As a result, this is not a perfect way to judge the intent, since the exact same search entry can lead to many distinct websites, each fulfilling different objectives. Now, if the searcher conducted a unique search and was led to one unique destination each time, this method has the potential to provide some relevant insight. However, consider the times when the searcher runs only one search query, clicks to visit a site, realizes it isn’t the right one, hits the back button, and clicks on the next link. Using the traditional method of tracking intent, you’d be left with one search query and three possible intentions. Each click would be counted as an intended destination, when in fact the user was only looking to find the final site they visited, (not the first ones they clicked on in error). I have always called this the Homonym Effect of search.

My belief is that, as the search marketplace progresses, search engines and search entities will continue to refine their algorithms in an attempt to produce search results that more accurately reflect searcher intent. Achieving 100% relevance, however, won’t be easy. At comScore, we have also been working to improve our understanding of searcher intent in ways that consider:

• the destination URL (this is important, but not sufficient on its own)
• all of the sites that a searcher visited long before and long after the actual search being analyzed
• all of the types of individuals that use the defined terms

Prediction #2: Search Will be Used More Widely as a Branding Tool

In the not so distant past, online ad dollars made up a very small share of total ad spend across all media. Content with traditional methods of branding advertising, many marketers were not inspired by the idea of venturing into the digital world. According to Lehman Brothers and Think Equity partners, total U.S. measured media spend in 2008 was $186 billion, of which $118 billion was spent on branding. As a subset of these numbers, U.S. online advertising spend was $26 billion, of which $6 billion was spent on branding advertising. As you can see below, even as recently as 2008, only 5% of all media branding ad dollars were spent online:

However, 2009 is showing us that the search market is one of the most vibrant segments of the online channel. As it continues to grow in volume, and as more and more people use search throughout their day, we are beginning to see investments in search advertising by traditional branding advertisers. Companies that had been basking in the comfort of traditional offline media are now beginning to transfer their branding dollars into the online channel.

A great example of this is Kraftfoods.com. Used almost exclusively as a branding vehicle, Kraftfoods.com saw more than 10 million search clicks in the U.S. during the first half of 2009, 33.4% of which were paid clicks (see below). Visitors to Kraftfoods.com can learn about the latest recipes, promotions, and healthy living suggestions before making a purchase of a Kraft brand at the supermarket.

Prediction #3: Search Will Become Increasingly Important Earlier in the Buying Cycle

Traditionally considered one of the final steps in the consumer purchase process, search is moving up the funnel. We are now seeing search activity taking place much earlier in the consumer buying cycle, even in the beginning stages. The number of total monthly searches conducted per unique searcher grew 25 percent in one year (data from June 2008 to June 2009) bringing the total number of searches to 202 million in June 2009. Whether it is an online purchase or an eventual offline purchase, searchers are becoming increasingly dependent on social media and product reviews to assist them at the onset of shopping. The searches conducted to access these tools are also becoming more specific in describing their needs, with the average search phrase now containing more than 3 words per search query.

This shuffle of the consumer buying cycle means that search marketers must be aware of the need to reach consumers earlier in the process. While it used to be typical for consumers to use search after having established interest in a type of product, buyers are now also using search as they establish interest – one of the first stages of the cycle. Given the boundless amount of information that search allows consumers to access, it no longer makes sense to only deliver search ads to consumers when they are ready to make a purchase. It is much more likely that a purchase decision will be made before arriving at a vendor website. Marketers should adopt new strategies to accommodate this change, and opt to market up the funnel to attract customers.

So, there you have it. Those are my three predictions for the future of the search market. Search has already proved to be a very successful tool for marketers and consumers, and it is still growing at an incredible rate each year. As search technology continues to improve, we can expect that search will become integral for many more web functions. Search allows marketers to reach consumers in ways that are not as easy through other channels. The future of search should see an ability to more accurately decipher searcher intent, followed by a push of marketers’ branding efforts online as a result of the use of search by consumers earlier during their consideration and buying processes.

It’s been a busy time. Last week on Tuesday morning I landed at O’Hare at 6:00 am following a week in Brazil meeting with clients and speaking at Digital Age 2.0 - a terrific conference in Sao Paulo organized by Now!Digital Business. Thanks to United Airlines being on-time and immigration at O’Hare being deserted, I was then able to get to Navy Pier in time for my panel at ad:tech Chicago late on Tuesday morning.

Here are some observations on Brazil and ad:tech.

Visiting Brazil is always special and so it was for me on this trip. The conference gave me the opportunity to meet some of comScore’s Brazilian clients, either at the conference or in a more private setting. The conference attracted about 800 attendees, which is testament to Brazil’s vibrant and growing Internet economy and to the country’s ability to navigate around the world’s economic meltdown.

It’s fascinating to look at comScore data and realize that Brazil is by far the largest Internet user community in Latin America and now the ninth largest Internet user community in the world, growing at an astounding rate of 54% last year - which also makes Brazil one of the fastest growing Internet populations. In fact, if one includes Internet access from public machines, such as Internet cafes, Brazil’s Internet user population of 58 million people age 15 or older would likely eclipse the top three western European countries – Germany, France and the U.K. – in number of users.

Brazil is also the #1 country in Latin America with a significant e-commerce market that has grown by about 20% this year. And, the Brazilian online ad market (search plus display) represents about 8% of all media spending in Brazil (the same rate as the U.S.) but has experienced growth of more than 20% this year while the U.S. has only grown in the low single digits.

Brazilians are very heavy Internet users, leading the region in terms of total time spent online at about 27 hours per visitor in a month, and outpacing the worldwide average of 22 hours by almost 20%! Brazil’s elevated levels of Internet usage can be traced in part to the popularity of social networking, with 84% of all Brazilian Internet users visiting a social networking site in a month.

Overall, Google Sites is the #1 property in Brazil, followed by Microsoft, UOL, Terra and Globo. Google’s success is driven by the popularity of its Orkut social networking site, which attracts a staggering 74% of all Internet users in a month and dominates the market by a wide margin, and its commanding lead in the search market with 90% of all searches conducted.

Turning to ad:tech, I have to say I was pleased to see that the attendance was almost the same as last year, which is saying something in today’s challenging economic environment. I hope it also says something about the attractiveness of Chicago as a city in which to hold a major industry event.

The focus of my panel was: “Defining the New Media Currency - How to Bring Traditional Media Metrics Online - Or Should We?” Interestingly, there seemed to be general agreement among us that the online ad industry needs to use some of the same key metrics that traditional media have employed successfully for decades: copy effectiveness, reach and frequency. Or, to put it in simpler terms: what we say, to how many people and how often. This should also include a measure of the ability of any given media plan to increase sales of the advertised product, whether the purchase took place online or in a retail store. This approach seemed to be generally accepted by the panel as being necessary if we’re to move more branding ad dollars online.

Agreement among us was shattered, however, when one of the panelists mentioned the importance of “targeting with transparency.” Use of the word “transparency” provoked a reaction on my part because this particular individual’s company had just been identified in a study by UC at Berkeley, which was covered in the recent Wired article “You Deleted Your Cookies? Think Again,” as using Flash cookies to regenerate cookies that a user had deleted from their browser – without informing the user. The violation is fairly egregious under even normal circumstances, but as the Wired article explains, these are not normal times: “The study also comes as Congress and federal regulators are looking at ways of reining in the online tracking and advertising industry, whose attempts at self-regulation have conspicuously failed to make the industry transparent about when, how and why it collects data about internet users.”

It seems to me our industry risks running into a real credibility problem if we’re telling the federal government that we can self-regulate ourselves while some companies are blatantly violating the most basic of privacy practices. It’s akin to throwing a lamb chop in front of a pack of howling wolves. We’re just asking for trouble. And trouble could take the form of laws or regulations that require consumers to give opt-in consent before cookies (even anonymous ones) can be placed on their computers. That’s not good news and it could affect negatively many members of the industry. For example, it would impact marketers’ ability to accurately and anonymously tailor their communications to consumers based on individual consumer interests, making such communications less relevant to the consumer, and more costly for the marketer. Meanwhile, consumers would be bearing the burden of continuously having to opt-in to receive the cookies perhaps multiple times on each web page that they view in order for ordinary events to occur – such as a site “remembering” a registered user and his/her preferences. Such an outcome would defeat the value that consumers derive from cookies which are intended to make the consumer experience more convenient and relevant to the consumer’s interest. As a result, I chose to highlight the issue at ad:tech – and I’m doing so again here – in the hope that this will help bring about a strict and voluntary adherence to privacy requirements by all industry participants.

Recently comScore reached the noteworthy milestone of having surpassed 10,000 followers on Twitter! It is perhaps fitting that we reached this number nearly ten years to the day that comScore was founded back in 1999.

To celebrate these important landmarks, comScore is kicking off the #comScore10 campaign on Twitter where we will pose a variety of questions to our community of followers about the past, present, and future of the digital medium. The questions will range from being nostalgic, probing, irreverent, introspective or humorous as we take a look back at how we’ve gotten to this point in the information age and where it promises to take us in the future.

And who better to weigh in on this topic than YOU? We’d love to hear what you have to say and hope you’ll participate!

Last week’s report that the U.S. unemployment rate jumped to 9.7% in August is another stark reminder of the tough economic environment. With unemployment climbing 4 percentage points in the past year alone, it is no surprise that one of the fastest gaining online categories during that time has been Job Search, which is up 33% vs. year ago to 23.1 million visitors in July.

Despite the gloom of the current job market, every cloud has a silver lining, and in this case I think it is how the Internet is giving those affected by the job situation the critical resources to help navigate this treacherous environment. There is one online resource (not even included in the Job Search site category) that particularly stands out to me: LinkedIn.com. The business-oriented social networking site has become more important than ever for those looking for job opportunities and it has the growth to show for it. The U.S. audience at LinkedIn neared its all-time high in July with about 8 million visitors, a 66% increase vs. year ago.

I decided to investigate how LinkedIn might be playing a role as a critical networking resource for those on the job hunt. To do so, I compared the share of visitors to LinkedIn who were heavy, medium and light visitors to the Job Search category to that of the U.S. Internet population as a whole. (“Heavy” is defined as top 20% of visitors by time spent, “medium” is next 30%, and “light” is the bottom 50%). By looking at the relative representation of these sub-segments, we can get a better idea of whether or not these people are in the job market and how intensively they might be looking.

As it turns out, LinkedIn showed a significantly higher percentage of its visitors from each of the three sub-segments of Job Search category visitors. In fact, 28.5% of its total audience was comprised of job-seekers, compared to just 11.8% of the total U.S. Internet population. Perhaps even more compelling is that 8.2% of LinkedIn.com visitors were heavy visitors to the Job Search category, compared to just 2.4% of the total Internet audience. In fact, LinkedIn had at least twice as high a percentage of visitors from each HML sub-segment than those of the total Internet population.

These data indicate that LinkedIn is substantially more likely to be used by those actively job-hunting than by those who are not, which suggests that online job-seekers are actually turning to LinkedIn as a resource to help them network. If that’s the case, then it is a terrific illustration of how social media is changing the way we’re able to leverage of respective social networks to initiate positive action.

We know that social media enable us all to exert a certain degree of influence with our friends and colleagues through the digital medium, and what better way to use this influence than to get after a new job if we’ve lost one in this tough environment. Amidst the constant debate over whether or not social media is actually valuable, sometimes the obvious is overlooked. And I think this is just one example among many where social media is fundamentally changing the way the real world functions.

Many small brands are never advertised on TV and do not get to experience the glamour and rewards of brand advertising. Often, the reason is the unattractive economics of trying to reach a low incidence buyer base. For instance, in a product category with only a 5% buyer penetration, a brand using a gunshot advertising approach on TV will reach 95 out of 100 people who are not category buyers. Unless the product has a very high lifetime value like diapers, advertising on TV would be prohibitively expensive. Fortunately, those neglected, advertising deprived brands now have a cost effective means of reaching their audience. The medium, as you might have guessed, is online advertising.

comScore just completed a study where we built mathematical models to identify CPG product category buyers based on their surfing history. We used the single source database we’ve built with IRI where we track online behavior for a large sample of households who also record their grocery purchases using handheld UPC scanners. The results were very encouraging for categories with buyer penetrations around or below 5% of the population. Based on their online browsing activity, our predictive model “scores” people on their likelihood of buying a particular category and it turns out we can use the model to identify category buyers with a high degree of accuracy. If we take the people with modeled scores in the top 20% (i.e. these are people that our model says are in the top 20% in terms of the likelihood of being category buyers), we get targeting lifts between 250 and up to almost 500 (where an index of 200 represents an increase of 100% in precision over no targeting). For example, Nail Treatment is a category with a 5.3% penetration. By targeting the likeliest 20% of buyers, one can achieve a targeting lift of 341. Another way of looking at this is to say that a campaign targeted to 20% of the scored population reaches 68% of the category buyers, significantly improving the economics of advertising as a result of a targeting lift of 341 (i.e. 68/20). The following table summarizes a few category examples:

This is a win-win scenario. The good news for brands in these types of smaller categories is that they may be able to advertise affordably for the first time by using the Internet They represent new potential ad dollars that can be cost effectively spent online, and which were never captured by TV due to its more limited targeting ability.

As occurred at the Davos World Economic Forum conference earlier this year, the global economic crisis was a pervasive subject at last week’s “Summer Davos” meeting in Dalian, China. I was asked to share my thoughts on what companies like comScore can do to continue growing in rocky economic times.

I’ve always believed that every cloud has a silver lining, and so it is with a recession. Or, to paraphrase Paul Romer, the noted Stanford economist: “ A crisis is a terrible thing to waste”.

As a company, the majority of comScore’s revenues come from North America and Western Europe, where the Internet Media and e-commerce markets have been hit pretty hard and their growth has slowed significantly. Needless to say, in this environment some of our customers are hurting. Many young Internet companies are having funding difficulties. Established companies are reducing their marketing budgets. Some financial services clients such as hedge funds are in a state of crisis. It all makes for a challenging marketplace. However, in the midst of these economic challenges there are some attractive opportunities. For example, the Internet’s lower cost offers marketers the opportunity to obtain the same advertising reach, frequency and sales impact as traditional media -- but at a lower cost. The economic headwinds are causing many companies to revaluate their investment in digital marketing -- and comScore is the right partner that can provide them with the proof of performance that’s needed to justify the movement of their ad dollars to the Internet. In fact, the Internet offers such economic advantages in both advertising and e-commerce that we are seeing the Internet’s share of total media and retail spend increasing at a rapid clip.

One adjustment strategy that is paying us dividends is increasing our focus on international growth in markets such as Brazil, China, and other Asian countries that are growing faster than the rest of the world. These geographies represent a new growth opportunity for comScore. Consider that, today, 85% of all Internet users reside outside of the United States but only 15% of comScore’s revenue comes from outside the U.S. This is clearly a very attractive long term opportunity for us, but one that also acts as a short term counter to the domestic and European challenges.

Jack Welch once said: ‘Buy your competition or bury them’. I think that is excellent advice. Acquiring competitors can often be helpful when you can get it done. Acquisitions can open up adjacent markets, help accelerate international growth, or provide strong distribution synergies. When the economic crisis began, we found it was often a challenge to acquire private companies because their valuation expectations had not been reset commensurate with the lowered valuation of public companies. That is now changing and it’s clear that acquisition opportunities can be pursued at attractive valuations and leveraged to stimulate growth.

Finally. the abundance of talent that has been freed up in this labor market offers companies the opportunity to hire top notch people in key technical, operating or management positions, not to mention junior positions. The quality of available talent today is the highest it has been in a generation and no one should miss the chance to upgrade human capital, and raise overall corporate IQ and capabilities.

Bottom line, there is a genuine silver lining to this recession. The strategies I have outlined, coupled with rigorous cost reductions to maintain margins and fund necessary investments, will certainly help in the short term. More importantly, they offer the best recipe for generating far stronger growth when the clouds clear and the general economy begins growing again.

Last week, I spent some enjoyable time chatting with Jennifer Lindsay on Blogtalkradio. We covered a range of topics, including the history of comScore, a review of our new panel-centric hybrid Media Metrix 360 product and the challenges / opportunities facing the Internet industry.

I hope you enjoy the interview.

In a time of media fragmentation, economic uncertainty, and increasing consumer participation in media….there is one certainty, people still love sports! Over the last year, on average, one third of the Internet population visited a sports entity during the period of a month. It’s good to know that it’s not only me!

A deeper look into this phenomenon shows that Canadians are the biggest lovers of their sports content online, with 50% of Canadian Internet users visiting the sports site category in a month. The popularity of sports visitation in Canada is followed by the U.K and then the USA.

There are many different ways that people are getting their sports fix online, including viewing sports content through their portals, visit league websites, using sports aggregators/broadcasters, or watching highlights/programs/player interviews through video.

Sports entities are viewed online by over 360 million people worldwide, proving just how attracted consumers are to sports content. Exposure to the sports category in the U.S. covers all demographics with high indices for men and higher income households.

No to be forgotten is women’s viewing of online sports content. Women represent more than 44% of the visitors to the sports category. Importantly, however, we see that women age 21 or older with household income above $75,000 account for 12.8% of the online population in August 2009, but represent 16.3% of visitors to the sports site category. Taking a deeper look, you can see that 18.3% of the NHL Network is composed of this coveted demographic.

To further that point, we looked into the online buying power index (BPI) of women age 18-34 with children in the US. Here are the in-season BPIs for the professional sports leagues, showing that each over indexes in the online buying power of moms, with the NHL the clear leader. I guess that’s why there is so much fuss about “hockey moms” and the buying power they represent.

Being from Canada, one might think we eat, sleep and drink hockey….but, truth be told, we’re just sports crazy.