Travel Trends – Statistics Overload! Email Open Rate, Young People, MySpace v. Facebook, Punk Kids!

Consumers Opening Fewer E-Mails – Fewer consumers worldwide are opening marketing e-mails, according to a November 2008 study by MailerMailer.

The company found that the average marketing e-mail open rate fell to 13.20% in the first half of 2008, compared with 16.11% in the first half of 2007. Click rates also fell, from 3.18% in the first half of 2007 to 2.73% in the first half of this year.

http://www.emarketer.com/

Are Young Adults Really Brand-Resistant? – The 18-to-24-year-old set is famously media-drenched, with high Internet and mobile phone usage. However, these young adults are not solidly opposed to brands themselves, and are willing to spread the word about the ones they like. That is one of the findings Synovate made in June and July of 2008 in its “Young Adults Revealed” study, released this month.

When asked about their online brand engagement in the past month, 28% of respondents had talked about a brand on a discussion forum, 23% had put brand-related content on their instant messaging (IM) profile, and 19% had added branded content to their homepage or social networking site.

Nearly one-half said they had clicked on online ads, and 18% had accessed brand and product information through a portal. Nearly one-quarter had uploaded ads to social networks and online video sites in the past month.

“They are more than just ‘comfortable’ with brands,” said Julian Rolfe, global manager at Synovate, in a statement. “They want to associate themselves with brands they see as ‘cool’ and this is why we see them uploading clips to their social networking sites and IM services.”

http://www.emarketer.com/

Behind the Numbers: MySpace and Facebook – Many of the ad formats that social media sites are experimenting with are too new to be tracked via existing measurement techniques.

Take display ad views. Facebook’s share of display ad views was 1.1% in June 2008, compared with 15.9% for Fox Interactive Media, which includes MySpace, according to comScore Media Metrix.

http://www.emarketer.com/

College Student and Teen Web Tastes – Teens and college students seem to have remarkably similar tastes in Websites, based on a first glance at a September 2008 Youth Trends study.

Facebook, Google and Yahoo! rated highly among teen and college student males and females. YouTube was also generally among the top five listed, except among females in college.

http://www.emarketer.com/