Are you itching to load up your e-commerce site with all the latest in animations and graphics, secure in the belief that broadband is not just coming, it has already arrived?
I mean, you have your cable modem or DSL. Doesn't everybody?
Think again. You might want to hold off on slowing down your load times in
light of a recent study that shows most U.S. households will still be using
dial-up access in the year 2005.
Dial-up. 2005. Read my lips.
In fact, 30 percent of U.S. households state that they still don't have a need or
desire for Internet access, according to a research report from Cahners In-Stat Group.
"By the year 2005 there will still be just as many households without
Internet access, as those using cable modems or DSL," said Daryl Schoolar,
senior analyst with In-Stat's ISP Service. As a result, consumer ISPs will
still find a significant portion of their revenues coming from dial-up access.
"The study is entitled "Hooked on Dial-up: Consumer ISP Trends and Market
Share."
ISPs will not be able to afford to turn their backs on dial-up consumers
altogether, as they will continue to make up a substantial share of the
market, the study says. And clearly if ISPs can't turn their backs on the
slowpokes, neither can your e-commerce site.
There is some good news for the ISPs, however. These providers will find
their future growth potential in migrating dial-up users to broadband access,
the report says. And the higher access fees associated with broadband will
help to continue to grow ISP revenues.
In-Stat is a unit of Cahners Business Information, a provider of
information and marketing solutions to business professionals and a member of
the Reed Elsevier plc group.
Protocol Usage-Based Marketing
Something else intrigued me this week -- a report from NetValue, a company
that tracks the amount of data transferred over Internet protocols.
The report says that marketers whose strategies include specific protocols
should focus their tactics on the most active users of those protocols -- the
20 percent of a protocol's audience transmitting the most data across it.
In February, this 20 percent (the most active users) in each protocol were
responsible for transmitting more than three quarters of all of the data
transferred per protocol, the report says.
For example, the top 20 percent most active chat users were responsible for
transmitting more than 95 percent of all chat data.
"This means that it is crucial for marketers and advertisers to be able to
identify the primary users of a protocol and understand their behavior," said
Jim Hatch, president of NetValue. "This will allow them to turn this
behavioral intelligence into marketing, advertising and site growth
initiatives to help attract and retain a loyal audience while increasing
their profit potential."
That made some sense to me, and I think if I were planning a marketing
campaign for an e-commerce site, this sort of data might come in handy.
Some other interesting NetValue statistics:
- Homemakers account for 26.5 percent of the most active game users online.
- News protocols have the highest concentration of men at 78.3 percent.
- And when it comes to audio/video protocols, almost half of the most active
users are 15-24 year olds (45 percent) and male (71.7 percent).
- Companies looking for unique ways to reach 15-24 year olds online should
consider strategies that include AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger and
Yahoo Messenger. 15-24 year olds represent 38.5 percent of the most active IM
users compared to 18.4 percent of the general Internet population.
IE 7
Firefox 2.0
