How Active Is the 'Mature' Market Online?

The segment of the population born before 1945, now reaching the age 62 and older, is nearing 17 million in the United States. While many believe the demographic is not online, or avoids ads, the report, "Matures 62+ On the Internet: An Overlooked Audience" released jointly by Focalyst and Dynamic Logicfinds the group spends a collective three-quarters of a billion minutes a day on the Internet, or an average 44 minutes per day individually.

A large portion of the demographic, especially those under the age 71, are online, and do more than check e-mail and share pictures of their grandchildren. Here's a list of online activities, and the percent of adults over the age of 62 who engage in each.

• Search engines: 59 percent
• Contact family and friends: 59 percent
• Gather information: 47 percent
• News/current events/weather: 43 percent
• Travel planning/reservations: 41 percent
• Health and health-related information: 38 percent
• Exchange photos with family/friends: 33 percent
• Finance/online banking: 24 percent
• Paying bills: 23 percent
• Single/multiple-player games: 21 percent
• Investment/transactions: 17 percent
• Education/training: 13 percent

There's almost no difference between age segments in terms of motivation to buy. The study divides matures, boomers, and generation X, Y, and Z by purchase intent, and finds matures to be 1.5 on a scale of 4, where both other groups are 1.4. The top of the scale (4) represents the highest portion of people impacted by online advertising.

Pharmaceutical and insurance advertising are identified as the top categories where the 62 year-old and over market is most engaged. It also identifies additional categories such as package goods, travel, and entertainment, which includes movies, television shows and games as viable categories for marketing to this demographic segment.

The report uses MarketNorms data from Dynamic Logic, a marketing effectiveness database of over 3,650 campaigns across more than a dozen industries collected from over 5.5 million surveys.

Published by: Enid Burns

Published 6th May, 2008

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