Web Remains a Man's World Outside US
Nielsen//NetRatings says there is no gender gap when it comes to Internet users in the US, but in other countries around the world, the Web is still very much a man's world.
Nielsen//NetRatings says there is no gender gap when it comes to Internet users in the US, but in other countries around the world, the Web is still very much a man's world.
The demographic split in Web surfers from nations other than the US remains heavily weighted toward males, according to data from Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, and the UK gathered by Nielsen//NetRatings.
The US Internet audience remains slightly weighted toward females, who represented 50.8 percent of the May activity recorded by Nielsen//NetRatings, versus males, who represented 49.2 percent of the overall audience. The widest gender gap was seen in the UK, where 60.9 percent of the May audience was male and 39.1 percent was female, and in Singapore, where 57.6 percent of the audience was male and 42.4 percent was female. Males across all markets also spent between two and three hours longer surfing the Web in May than females.
“The demographic split in the Internet audience in the US has evened out over the past 18 months,” said Sean Kaldor, vice president of E-Commerce, NetRatings. “The female audience in the US is primarily visiting shopping sites, such as jcpenney.com, and spiegel.com, home sites, such as hgtv.com, or general interest sites like oprah.com. Overseas, the female audience is still primarily visiting portals like ninemsn.com.au in Australia, or msn.com in New Zealand, Ireland and the UK. Marketers looking to target female audiences can interpret this activity to mean that females outside the US are still searching for sites they can visit and re-visit for information pertinent to their daily lives.”
Male/Female Internet Audience Ratio May 2000 |
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Country | Male Composition |
Female Composition |
Average Time Spent Per Month | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Male | Female | |||
Australia | 54.87 | 45.13 | 8:01:41 | 5:57:08 |
Ireland | 55.20 | 44.80 | 5:18:42 | 3:21:59 |
Singapore | 57.57 | 42.43 | 7:23:38 | 4:30:18 |
New Zealand | 52.33 | 47.67 | 8:46:29 | 6:00:07 |
UK | 60.86 | 39.14 | 5:52:51 | 3:46:57 |
US | 49.25 | 50.75 | 9:54:57 | 8:18:26 |
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings |
The data also showed that, in general, US home users are narrowing their preferred Web sites while non-US home users remain open to a world of offerings.
“Americans visited an average of only 10 sites in the past month,” he said. “By contrast, even though other nations consistently spent less time online, they visited up to twice as many sites. For example, Internet users in the UK went to 16 sites while New Zealanders hit a whopping 19 sites. In countries where dominant market leaders have yet to evolve, consumers still practice window shopping on a much more pervasive basis than in the US.”
May results also showed that in the US, people with access to the Internet are far more likely to actually access the web than users overseas.
“Over 60 percent of US consumers with home Internet access go online in a typical month,” Kaldor said. “By contrast, consumers in Singapore are half as likely to go online; only 32 percent use their Internet access in a typical month, while UK and Ireland home users are similarly stingy, falling in at 45 percent and 44 percent, respectively.”
Average Internet Usage May 2000 |
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United States |
Australia | Ireland | New Zealand | Singapore | United Kingdom |
|
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Number of sessions per month | 18 | 12 | 9 | 15 | 12 | 11 |
Number of unique sites visited | 10 | 15 | 17 | 19 | 20 | 16 |
Page views per month | 662 | 436 | 361 | 429 | 495 | 386 |
Page views per surfing session | 36 | 36 | 39 | 29 | 42 | 35 |
Time spent per month | 9:05:24 | 7:05:05 | 4:25:19 | 7:27:31 | 6:09:31 | 5:02:36 |
Time spent during surfing session | 0:29:50 | 0:34:41 | 0:28:42 | 0:30:02 | 0:31:01 | 0:27:24 |
Duration of a page view | 0:00:50 | 0:00:58 | 0:00:44 | 0:01:02 | 0:00:44 | 0:00:47 |
Active Internet Universe (actually surfed) |
82.7 million | 3.5 million | 344,800 | 635,000 | 540,700 | 8.8 million |
Current Internet Universe (had access, didn’t necessarily go online) |
134.2 million | 7.0 million | 777,600 | 1.3 million | 1.7 million | 19.4 million |
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings |