Truth About Youth - An MTV Study

Not yet. Turns out MTV is not going out of business because of every Tom, Mark and Steve and Chad turning into a content generator or building platforms for user generated content. A series of studies and research by MTV compiled into a book The State Of Cool, confirms mostly what is common knowledge and some insights into trends on youth culture, their usage of internet and mobile.

The State of Cool, a book published by MTV’s Insight Studio has a statistic that should set minds at ease only 1% of young visitors to user generated content sites actually upload anything fresh and original. 10% or less actively participate and leave comments, while 90% are passive spectators.

Ah, what about the Pareto Principle then? But 1% is way too less.

The importance of catching ‘em young is almost a cliché , but MTV states the market is more lucrative than ever before: youth across India spend up to Rs 9 billion in pocket money every day. A good deal of it on mobile phones and related services. Two years is the utility expectancy of a cell phone for 63% of young Indians; 57% of youth across Asia state that they’d like to replace their MP3 players with a music enabled mobile. The eagerness to add ringtones, music and games is good news for promoters of value added services.

No wonder every youth brand is chasing the youth these days. And their pockets are only going to swell in the days to come.

Indian youth are obsessive about keeping in touch, of which social networking is a huge component . 59% visit sites like MySpace almost every time they are online (see I-Generation ). India lags behind only Brazil in this sphere. As many as 69% of young Indians use these sites to chat with existing friends. 57% consider it an avenue to meet new people. It’s a de facto art gallery for 49% who share pictures. In India , Brazil and China, exclusively online friends beat close friends by a huge margin.

What Indian youth add to their mobile phones?

















What Indians use the internet most for?



















What Indians use the mobile most for?


















Source: This Economic Times article.

PS. Recommended reading - Chasing Cool.

How Will Social Sites Make Money?

From the DNA article - Ads give local networking sites the pass

Since the past 18 months, many local social sites such as Yaari, Minglebox, Bharatstudent, Desimartini, Ibibo, Indyarocks, BigAdda and Campus18 were launched ....

... The biggest challenge is the revenue model, which online marketers say is not easy to work out. Social networking, with around 20 million users in the country, hasn’t really proved a goldmine for advertisers as many may have liked to believe.

Page views, impressions and click-throughs — three metrics which online marketers swear by — haven’t yet adapted to the social networking environment in a manner that does not encroach upon user experience.

Absolutely. Pageviews, impressions and click-throughs as a way to measure user engagement with one's brand or product and her perception wouldn't doesn't quite click. Considering the existence of Natural Born Clickers.

So what's the solution? Perhaps, devising better metrics and integrating experiential elements into one's online campaign planning. Robert McLuhan has more in this article in Brand Republic.

Natural Born Clickers - More Clicks Not Equal To Better Brand Building

Findings from a new study by Starcom, Tacoda and comScore’ suggest “the click is dead” as go-to measurement of effectiveness for brand-building display advertising campaigns .

..The study illustrates that heavy clickers represent just 6% of the online population yet account for 50% of all display ad clicks. While many online media companies use click-through rate as an ad negotiation currency, the study shows that heavy clickers are not representative of the general public.

Further preliminary Starcom data suggests no correlation between display ad clicks and brand metrics, and show no connection between measured attitude towards a brand and the number of times an ad for that brand was clicked. The research presentation suggests that when digital campaigns have a branding objective, optimizing for high click rates does not necessarily improve campaign performance.

The study only bring to light the problem faced by marketers(if they are aware of it, that is) and the agencies helping them. action being tracked and metrics clearly defined, using the medium for purposes of brand-building and brand loyalty is a problem waiting to be solved.

More on the study here.

Are Status Messages The Next Blogs?

Please take this survey - Are Status Messages The Next Blogs? . Will definitely be interesting, the results of this!

Poor Use Yahoo!, Rich Use Google

Wtf, you say? That's the best thing about studies. Like this one by Hitwise.

Teaser Campaign Using Websites..

...and offline promotion of the same.




















It's perhaps a campaign for a mall to be launched soon. The stat counter on the site at this point reads 16137. Decent enough numbers one would say for a visit to such a website.

The previous such campaign which is still fresh in one's memory is the whatiteez campaign for Krackjack(?) featuring Cyrus Broacha. Interesting trend this, of using the internet to run teaser campaigns.

No Such Thing Like Early Influencers?

Turns out then that The Tipping Point theory doesn't quite tip a lot of things.

Duncan Watts at Yahoo! Research has this to say -

A rare bunch of cool people just don't have that power. And when you test the way marketers say the world works, it falls apart. There's no there there.

Oh what then about a lot of poor souls who bet heavily on things to succeed hoping things will go viral, or that they are through by winning over the influencers? Interesting, because most things which became hugely popular, at least over the internet, owe their success to the viral power. More in this FastCompany article.