2008 will be a year that will be difficult to forget for a variety of reasons, but it is in the past as one regroups for 2009. As 1 billion (1,007,730,000) unique visitors worldwide have used the Internet during Dec 08 1, analytics can be used now more than ever with its critical mass to investigate universal trends in usage worldwide in comparison to a particular geography or audience target for valuable insights relevant to marketers.

Anthropologists have always tried to find the civilization untouched by modernity and the Starbucks in the town square to document universal characteristics that are common to humankind overall, good luck with that one today! Flip to digital, as today we have worldwide online behavior disposable at our fingertips that can be used to investigate universal digital trends quite easily with a Starbucks latte in hand, or not. The scope of this article examines worldwide Internet usage in comparison to US General Market (GM) and US Hispanic (USH) usage by behavior, Dec 07 – Dec 08 with valuable insights that emerge along the journey.

Chart 1:

First, once again, the US Hispanic Internet audience has outpaced General Market, this time by 218% Dec 08 – Year Ago (YA) growing 8% in unique visitors to 20,158,000 unique visitors, Dec 08 versus 4% growth for GM, as evident in Chart #1. The apple does not fall far from the tree, as the US Census reports record US Hispanic total population growth in sharp contrast to General Market: “With a 3.3 percent increase between July 1, 2006, and July 1, 2007, Hispanics were the fastest-growing minority group. The white population grew by 0.3 percent during the one-year period.” 2

Chart 2a:

To place top gaining categories in perspective, Chart #2A exposes the top 5 categories with the highest % change by unique visitors Dec 08 vs YA worldwide, Chart #2B for GM, and Chart #2C for USH.

Chart 2b:

Chart 2c:

A quick glance at Chart #2’s triptych indicates three distinct personalities that emerge: 1) YOUTH: worldwide category growth is basically lead by entertainment with online gaming (+59%), radio (+45%), multimedia (+42%), and games (+41%) in the top 5, 2) OLDER: meanwhile as a sign of the times GM is job searching (+51%) and trying to cut costs by leveraging coupons (+46%), 3) PRACTICAL: while USH has gay/lesbian (+119%), politics (+85%), women (+58%) and job search (+47%) in common with GM for top gaining categories, business to business category growth increased 49% to 2,987,000 unique visitors Dec 08.

It is almost as if the tastes exhibited worldwide emerge from the most youthful audience, while GM is older and USH is the most practical as they are trying to grow their business (business to business category growth) while job searching, very smart!

Chart 3:

Demographically, actually worldwide is a youthful audience with the highest percentage A25-34 of 26.3%, while GM has the least A25-34 (15.5%) and the most A 55+ (16.7%) and as always USH skews young with only 6.2% age 55+.

The engagement metric where USH shines from the rest is average minutes per visit of 31.2 while worldwide average minutes per visit are 29.3 vs. GM of 28.7. Just where are they spending more time among the big 3 experiences: Portals, Search/Navigation, or Conversational Media?

To answer, let’s refer to the largest syndicated sample size currently available to humanity which would be comScore World Metrix!

Chart 4:

Happily for Terra, our portal category surpasses search/navigation and conversational media, at times dramatically among the worldwide audience Dec 08 as seen in Chart #4. The portal category has the most unique visitors (948,883,000) vs. search/navigation and conversational media. However, the most dramatic difference in usage occurs between the portal category and search/navigation category in time spent metrics. Portal category visitors propel total minutes (MM) spent to be 11.5x as long as search/navigation category (459,746 / 39,826 = 11.5). In fact, average minutes per visitor is also 10.9x greater for portal category visitation vs. search/navigation (484.5 / 44.6 = 10.9).

Also interesting is that conversational media is incorrectly believed at times to have high visitation as subscribers to social networking sites update their walls and profiles which may be true but not in comparison to portals, or even search/navigation. Total visits (000) by category for portals is 30,007,998 vs. search/navigation of 18,324,393 vs. conversational media of 13,705,766 by reference towards Chart #4.

Perhaps one of the reasons for the success of portals is that they typically welcome users to stay, explore, and interact not only within their content and other users but also with the advertising on their typically ad supported model. Rather, search/navigation is designed to conduct an inquiry and leave to the resulting sponsored or organic links with user satisfaction dependent on the success of the exit click. Search/navigation is not the destination, rather for portals it is all about the destination. Actually, we like search/navigation as it drives traffic to Terra, thank you! Finally, portals can include search/navigation within the portal itself, as well as conversational media.

Terra is continuously evolving to cater to today’s user and tomorrow’s next generations to maintain itself in taste of the “now era” to its target audience of US Hispanics. Just fresh from our Atom Project, our complete site redesign (http://www.terra.com/advertise/in-the-news072.htm) we have already been enjoying increased traffic on key channels and services on Terra.com such as Terra TV (+ 220%) Dec 08 vs YA, US traffic. 3

Chart 5:

Chart #5 displays e-commerce sales by quarter and clearly shows the beginning of the economic downturn commencing 3Q ’07 as it hopefully has hit a bottom 4Q ’08 with a welcome trend reversal Jan 09 of +2% growth vs. YA. 4 Ensure that your brand is poised to enjoy this e-commerce rebound and possible beginning of an economic recovery.

Be a Smart Marketer. The worldwide audience has a YOUTH universal personality, while US General Market is OLDER, and US Hispanics are PRACTICAL as personalities that emerged by top category visitation by growth examined earlier, existing within 3 distinct online user experiences: PORTALS to stay and play, SEARCH/NAVIGATION to search and leave, or CONVERSATIONAL MEDIA which has its challenges as advertisers are hesitant to be placed within UGC content for campaign placement. It is clear at least at Terra that the winning combination is US Hispanic Internet Users as a target audience within portal placement as again in 2008 the numbers are in our favor, particularly in comparison to worldwide and US General market category visitation trends.

Terra wishes its audience and all Smart Marketer readers the best success and safety during these challenging economic times.

1.) ComScore Media Metrix. World Metrix. Dec 08

2.) US Census Bureau News. U.S. Hispanic Population Surpasses 45 Million Now 15 Percent of Total. 05.01.08 (http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/population/011910.html)

3.) Source: Internal metrics.

4.) Fulgoni, Gian. State of the Online Retail Economy. comScore. 02.19.2009

By Natasha Funk

Published:  March 09