Online News is a Man's World

The other day I posted a bit about the 18-to-34-year-old male demographic being so hard for advertisers to target. Perhaps these marketers need to go to news websites to find them...

According to a story in Wired, both the New York Times and the Washington Post claim that more than 60% of their registered users are male. No one seems to know why, but some leading theories are that:

• Women are still trying to catch up to men in terms of sheer numbers online, and/or
• Women aren't interested in online news

Perhaps... but I'd like to make a third suggestion. Many women, in order to protect themselves online, often misrepresent themselves as men. And since anyone can say whatever they like in online registrations, some women may choose to identify themselves as male.

But if it really is true that men outnumber women on news sites by nearly 2-1, these sites have some work to do in learning what interests women... or what keeps them away.


Minding the Planet Channel Mob