Nielsen Net Ratings

Is their Information Far Fetched or does it Parallel Your Experience?

[martinibuster]

There have been a few instances lately where the results of a Nielsen Net Rating report didn't coincide with my actual experience.

I just read a report [centerformediaresearch.com] that women aged 35-49 are the largest demographic of online game players.

Somehow, that, doesn't add up. I'm wondering if polling select groups for online ratings may be inappropriate for the medium.

[davidpbrown]

This BBC article [news.bbc.co.uk] suggests similar..

"While hardcore online gaming remains the preserve of young men, research firm Screen Digest found that "bored housewives" are fuelling the growth of other games offered on the net.

Females make up 65% of the growing market in skill-based games such as cards, solitaire and puzzles."

[Rosalind]

We tend to think of gaming as just computer and console games, and maybe flash games. But if they are including things like bridge and monopoly then these stats seem reasonable. I can't picture a lot of women of that age playing Halo or other games of brain-dead violence, but you never know.

[goodroi]

I agree that it depends on the definition of online gaming. In my experience more women will pay for online gaming (not gambling).

[cfx211]

MB, I have found Nielsen Net Ratings to have some serious accuracy problems with huge swings in numbers from one month to the next.

We average a few million uniques a month so our site shouldn't be subject to the sort of variability in panel baseds projections.

We spent 3 months trying to work out the differences with them and they tried to figure out the problem, but they could not figure out why they were so far off and inconsistent.

[martinibuster]

Whoa. Thanks for the BBC article. The bored housewife has come a long way from Flaubert's day.

The study quoted by the BBC has it's roots in the Nielsen report. I found this in another publication [pacpub.com]:

"…Screen Digest quotes figures produced by internet tracking agency Nielsen, which found that 64 per cent of online punters are women and 60 per cent of them are married. Around half of those who participate online are aged between 35 and 54.

But it also goes on to say that some online casinos are reporting a demographic shift as high as 70%.

[weebie]

Seems like a fair question to ask at this point is how many bored housewifes are actually going to start shelling out bucks to participate in online gaming? Stats can miss important discriminating factors.

[chrisnrae]

LOL, I don't think all women gamers are "bored housewives" ;-). I think the above sentiment hit it - it depends on what you think of when someone says games. If your thinking DD or Quest, then yep, the demographics would probably be a lot less women oriented. I recently read like a four page article on online gaming (not casino) in a magazine - but I can't seem to remember which magazine it was *sigh*. Of course now I will go insane until I can remember where it was.

As a side note, I thought the following statements [internetretailer.com] about the 18-34 year old category of Internet surfers in general were pretty interesting.

Edited to add: Here is the online gaming article [wired.com] I was thinking of, however, I read it in print and it appears the online version doesn't come with the 'nifty' graphs and charts that were with the article in print. Still pretty interesting though.

[markus007]

just look at yahoo games