www.for-women+seniors.ch
Bluewin launches channels targeting defined demographics
Bluewin launches channels aimed at defined demographic target groupsBy Clemens HörlerHorizontal Swiss websites that explicitly target women, immigrants or certain age segments are still rare. Of the major portals, only Bluewin offers Swiss themed channels for women and people 55 and older. Is there a need for such demographically defined channels at all?
Seniors and women have long been a fringe group in the Net community. According to Media Metrix, however, women overtook men in the U.S. in May 2000 and for the first time accounted for more than 50 percent of Internet users. Seniors are also catching up with seven-league boots in the U.S. and Europe (see box). The Swiss portal operator Bluewin has responded to this trend by offering a special women's channel since late summer.
The women's channel was recently followed by a channel for seniors. Bluewin is convinced that, in addition to dealing with age-specific topics such as retirement planning, the community factor is also a very important argument in favor of such a channel. Melanie Schneider, Media Relations Bluewin AG: "Our credo is that 'older' people are still active. They should not get the impression that they are no longer capable of discovering something new." The extra-large font of 55plus (http://55plus.bluewin.ch), as the channel is called, is also intended to accommodate people with declining eyesight.
Portal operator Bluewin goes its own way
Platforms defined according to demographic criteria have the same goal as vertical Web offerings that revolve around a specific topic: They are designed to provide a convenient way for advertisers and e-commerce drivers to target specific audiences with as little wastage as possible.
In Switzerland, there are only a few large web offerings that are aimed at groups explicitly defined by age, gender or origin. With 55plus and Woman, Bluewin is the only major portal operator in Switzerland that has integrated such offerings into the portal in addition to the actual thematic channels. msn.ch has taken over the women's channel WEBienne from Germany. Other portal operators focus exclusively on offers defined by topics: Eroticism, Games, Finance, News, etc.
The Swiss market is too small for target group portals
Because in the small Swiss market, it is proving difficult to achieve an interesting reach for e-commerce and online advertising if you restrict your target audience from the outset according to demographic criteria. The situation is different in the huge US market. A veritable boom in target group portals broke out there about two years ago. Whether it's a senior citizen of Chinese descent or a young Latina woman - they were all to be given their own little garden in the basically borderless World Wide Web.
Many of these sites, however, were only moderately successful and had to shut down their operations or slim down considerably. The leading American women's website Women.com recently had to cut 85 or a quarter of all its jobs and has just been taken over by its competitor iVillage.com. The reason: massive losses. The big Latino portals such as Latino.com and Yupi.com have also had to lay off staff en masse in recent months. Surveys of Hispanics in the U.S. have shown that many of them do not want their own websites, but prefer English-language sites.
Do women need at all
own portals?
From both a commercial and cultural standpoint, the question arises as to whether it makes sense to channel certain demographic target groups onto their own platforms, or whether one should not simply place thematic offerings on the web around which users form independently and dynamically.
Some commercial women's sites are criticized in advance by women: They only serve product placement and try to squeeze women into a Barbie world consisting of beauty cases, neat clothes and cooking recipes. Women, the critics argue, could independently search out what interested them from the Web and did not need analog products to the women's magazines at the newsstand. In contrast, Chine Lanzmann, co-founder of the French women's portal Newsfam.com, is convinced of the necessity of women's portals. "Women simply want to read different things than men."
Horizontal platforms that explicitly target specific age groups are also not without controversy. All the more so because today biological age is becoming increasingly irrelevant to lifestyle and self-image. Many older Internet users by no means want to be pigeonholed as senior citizens or even shoved into a Web retirement home, but are busy using music exchange networks like Napster and listening to Internet radio. Post-adolescents in their mid-thirties also tend to feel piqued when the creators of a portal for twens tell them that it is smart and cool because it is made by twens and not by 30- or 40-year-olds.
Division by age or thought generations?
The operators of the American portal Snowball.com have deliberately avoided this snub and refer to their offering to visitors as a platform for the Internet generation; only in their communication with advertisers do they refer to it as a youth platform for 13- to 30-year-olds. After all, in the age of declining click rates, you have to sell them clear and attractive target groups.
Röne Bertschi, Managing Director of Carat Interactive, Dietikon, believes that Internet users should not be divided and addressed according to biological age, but according to generations of thought and behavior. Why should target groups be defined in advance and content geared to their possible interests? Perhaps because this allows you to present a target group to the advertising industry more quickly, rather than having to research the user structure first.
According to Gianni Abner, Head of B G Media Internet, it is still too early to make statements about the commercial prospects for success of gender- or age-specific Internet platforms in Switzerland. However, it is certainly justified to separate certain topics by gender, for example. The only thing is that there is still little good content to be found on most women's sites. But this is crucial to whether one can establish oneself with the desired target group.
Surfing starts at 55
Seniors and women have long been a fringe group in the Net community. According to Media Metrix, however, women overtook men in the U.S. in May 2000 and for the first time accounted for more than 50 percent of Internet users. Seniors are also catching up with seven-league boots in the U.S. and Europe (see box). The Swiss portal operator Bluewin has responded to this trend by offering a special women's channel since late summer.
The women's channel was recently followed by a channel for seniors. Bluewin is convinced that, in addition to dealing with age-specific topics such as retirement planning, the community factor is also a very important argument in favor of such a channel. Melanie Schneider, Media Relations Bluewin AG: "Our credo is that 'older' people are still active. They should not get the impression that they are no longer capable of discovering something new." The extra-large font of 55plus (http://55plus.bluewin.ch), as the channel is called, is also intended to accommodate people with declining eyesight.
Portal operator Bluewin goes its own way
Platforms defined according to demographic criteria have the same goal as vertical Web offerings that revolve around a specific topic: They are designed to provide a convenient way for advertisers and e-commerce drivers to target specific audiences with as little wastage as possible.
In Switzerland, there are only a few large web offerings that are aimed at groups explicitly defined by age, gender or origin. With 55plus and Woman, Bluewin is the only major portal operator in Switzerland that has integrated such offerings into the portal in addition to the actual thematic channels. msn.ch has taken over the women's channel WEBienne from Germany. Other portal operators focus exclusively on offers defined by topics: Eroticism, Games, Finance, News, etc.
The Swiss market is too small for target group portals
Because in the small Swiss market, it is proving difficult to achieve an interesting reach for e-commerce and online advertising if you restrict your target audience from the outset according to demographic criteria. The situation is different in the huge US market. A veritable boom in target group portals broke out there about two years ago. Whether it's a senior citizen of Chinese descent or a young Latina woman - they were all to be given their own little garden in the basically borderless World Wide Web.
Many of these sites, however, were only moderately successful and had to shut down their operations or slim down considerably. The leading American women's website Women.com recently had to cut 85 or a quarter of all its jobs and has just been taken over by its competitor iVillage.com. The reason: massive losses. The big Latino portals such as Latino.com and Yupi.com have also had to lay off staff en masse in recent months. Surveys of Hispanics in the U.S. have shown that many of them do not want their own websites, but prefer English-language sites.
Do women need at all
own portals?
From both a commercial and cultural standpoint, the question arises as to whether it makes sense to channel certain demographic target groups onto their own platforms, or whether one should not simply place thematic offerings on the web around which users form independently and dynamically.
Some commercial women's sites are criticized in advance by women: They only serve product placement and try to squeeze women into a Barbie world consisting of beauty cases, neat clothes and cooking recipes. Women, the critics argue, could independently search out what interested them from the Web and did not need analog products to the women's magazines at the newsstand. In contrast, Chine Lanzmann, co-founder of the French women's portal Newsfam.com, is convinced of the necessity of women's portals. "Women simply want to read different things than men."
Horizontal platforms that explicitly target specific age groups are also not without controversy. All the more so because today biological age is becoming increasingly irrelevant to lifestyle and self-image. Many older Internet users by no means want to be pigeonholed as senior citizens or even shoved into a Web retirement home, but are busy using music exchange networks like Napster and listening to Internet radio. Post-adolescents in their mid-thirties also tend to feel piqued when the creators of a portal for twens tell them that it is smart and cool because it is made by twens and not by 30- or 40-year-olds.
Division by age or thought generations?
The operators of the American portal Snowball.com have deliberately avoided this snub and refer to their offering to visitors as a platform for the Internet generation; only in their communication with advertisers do they refer to it as a youth platform for 13- to 30-year-olds. After all, in the age of declining click rates, you have to sell them clear and attractive target groups.
Röne Bertschi, Managing Director of Carat Interactive, Dietikon, believes that Internet users should not be divided and addressed according to biological age, but according to generations of thought and behavior. Why should target groups be defined in advance and content geared to their possible interests? Perhaps because this allows you to present a target group to the advertising industry more quickly, rather than having to research the user structure first.
According to Gianni Abner, Head of B G Media Internet, it is still too early to make statements about the commercial prospects for success of gender- or age-specific Internet platforms in Switzerland. However, it is certainly justified to separate certain topics by gender, for example. The only thing is that there is still little good content to be found on most women's sites. But this is crucial to whether one can establish oneself with the desired target group.
Surfing starts at 55
In Europe, according to a study by Pro Active International, only 9.2 percent of the over-55s were online in the fall of 2000. In the USA, the figure was over 21 percent at the end of last year. But according to Pro Active International, the over-55s are also catching up strongly in Europe and have made the biggest gains since spring 2000, which also applies to e-commerce spending. Wemf's MA Net (wave 2/00) also shows that this age group, together with the very young, has made up the most ground compared with wave 1/00. One of the few older online platforms in Switzerland that specifically targets seniors is Seniorweb.ch, which currently has around 300000 page impressions per month. Seniorweb is now a partner of Bluewin and content provider for 55plus.
