Razorfish Feed Report Survey Data

How Social Apps, Pokes and Widgets Can Help You Connect

By Garrick Schmitt,Malia Supe andBenjamin Lerch

1

The Ever-Ready, Everywhere Consumer

Connected consumers have enthusiastically embraced socialmedia (both technologies and networking sites), are activelybuilding and refning their own trusted personal networks, andare rapidly embracing new communication oerings like Twitter.In so doing, they are challenging publishers, advertisers andmarketers to meet their needs in new, distributed and largelyuncharted territories—many o which have no analog touchpoints—and to provide services that have no immediatemonetization models.This was the key fnding o our second annual

Razorfsh Digital Consumer Behavior Study.

Content Will Drive Awareness, Not Advertising

As a result, we predict savvy marketers and publishers will start tomerge tactics in the months and years ahead. Content, in our view,will become advertising—both or brands looking to reach andengage consumers and or publishers who will look at content asan acquisition vehicle or a broader audience.In this uncharted territory, distribution must evolve into a science,as reaching consumers in a ragmented, personalized environmentwill become increasingly complex. Brands will need new tools andservices because today’s widget might become tomorrow’s TV set. And every player in this space will need to not only understand, butalso learn how to manage digital consumer connections with almostno explicit controls.

Use It or Lose It: Exploring Adoption vs. Engagement

Last year, the intent o our study was to discover to what degreetoday’s digital consumer is really changing online behavior becauseo Web 2.0 technologies and services. We were pleased to fnd thatthe consumer adoption curve or Internet technologies was muchmore signifcant than we had anticipated.This year our design research team’s goals were quite dierent.We sought to dive much deeper and examine how advances inInternet technologies—specifcally in online activity, social mediausage, ecommerce habits and mobile access—were changing theway connected consumers engaged online and the impact o thosebehaviors on the industry.

Today’s digital consumers have moved well beyond merelysampling Web 2.0 technologies and services. They are nowadopting these services at a breakneck pace and readilyexperimenting with new, more sophisticated oerings en masse.

FEED:

The Razorsh Consumer Experience Report / 2008

Behavior Trumps Demographics Online:Connected Consumers Span Ages, Geography

In June 2008, Razorfsh surveyed 1,006 U.S. consumers (56% emale,44% male) in our age groups to understand their digital desires,rustrations and consumption habits.The respondents were evenly split geographically between 10 U.S. metrosand broader geographic representation (49% and 51%, respectively).To avoid duplicating the general work o Pew, Forrester and otherresearch frms, our goal was to survey what we call “connectedconsumers.” These are the people our clients are most interested inunderstanding and reaching. Key characteristics include:

•Accesstobroadband•Spent$200onlineinthepastyear(travel,Netix,tickets,

Amazon gits, etc.)

•Visiteda“communitysite”(MySpace,YouTube,Facebook,

Classmates, Wikipedia, etc.)

•Consumedorcreatedsomeformofdigitalmedia,suchas

photos, videos, music or newsBased on previous Razorfsh consumer research, we have ound thatthese connected consumers roughly mirror the U.S. population withbroadband access. According to the Pew Internet & American LieProject, on the whole, about 55% o all Americans today have a high-speed Internet connection, up rom 47% in 2007. This translates toroughly 165 million people, based on a July 2007 population estimaterom the CIA’s The World Factbook (Total Population: 301,139,947,July 2007 est.)

Web 2.0 Goes Mainstream: Adoption Accelerates,Users Aggregate Around Niche Interests

Building upon our fndings rom last year, we ound that consumersare continuing to customize their digital experiences around theirown personal, niche interests. According to our survey, 64% oconnected consumers have customized the home page o theirchoice with content eeds, scheduled updates or other eatures.

Moresurprisingly,91%oftheseconsumersuseoneofthevemajorInternetportals—Google,Yahoo!,MSN,AOLandAsk.com—tostart

their online experiences.Google is the avorite o these consumers, with 37% choosing eitherGoogle.com or iGoogle as their home page.

/* More surprisingly, 91% o theseconsumers use one o the ve majorInternet portals—Google, Yahoo!,MSN, AOL and Ask.com—to starttheir online experiences. */

3