Sports and Social: What Internet Youth Wants

Need to find a niche market for a new line of cosmetics? Want to find new clientele for athletic shoes? The Internet could be your online gold mine.

by Kristina Knight

A study from Youth Trends found that young women and young men use the Internet for different things. It focused on kids between the ages of 16 and 24. For young ladies, the Internet is a social hub. Sites like MySpace and Facebook are among their favorite places to go. "For females on the web right now, posting and sharing photos is big, so you can essentially say: females are to digital photos as males are to sports," Josh Weil of Youth Trends is quoted as saying. For young men, sports sites like ESPN, Yahoo and Google are favorite landing pages.

For both segments, their favorite search portal was Google, with 31% of females and 34% of males it was among their favorites top 10 sites.

For online advertising dollars, this means that advertising on Google, paying for prime placement on search results pages and pay-per-click advertising is at a premium. It also indicates that social sites like Facebook and sports sites like ESPN are prime locations for advertising dollars.

Tags: 16-24 age group, Facebook, Google, MySpace, search marketing