Some 31% of online Americans aged 18-64 report having clicked on an ad they saw on a social network, but that number reaches 42% among Millennials (aged 15-31), and peaks at 47% among men of that age group, according to a September 2012 report by Ipsos Media. These young men appear far more click-happy than young women: a relatively smaller one-third of the female Millennials surveyed said they’ve clicked on an ad they saw on a social network.
Overall, Millennials are more likely to have clicked on a social network ad they saw than Gen Xers (aged 32-45; 31%) and Boomers (46-64; 21%). While among the younger crowd, men are more eager clickers, that seems to change with age. About one-quarter of female Boomers say they’ve clicked on a such an ad, compared to roughly one-fifth of male Boomers surveyed.
A study released in September by Kenshoo Social and Resolution Media found that among gender-targeted Facebook ad campaigns, 53% of those budgets were spent targeting men, leading to a higher ad impression volume among men than women (58% vs. 42%), as well as a higher click volume for men (60% vs. 40%).
Despite the high rate of reported social network ad clicks, Americans significantly lag the average of respondents across the 24 countries measured by Ipsos. In fact, on average, 48% of online respondents (compared to 31% in the US) across those 24 countries claim to have clicked on an ad they saw on a social network. These remarkably high numbers suggest a potential gap between perception and actual behavior.
1 in 4 Online Americans Open Retail Emails On a Mobile
The Ipsos study finds that online Americans report being less likely to have opened an email sent by a retailer on their mobile phone (24%) than to have clicked on an ad seen on a social network (31%). As with social network ad clicks, the likelihood of opening a retail email on a mobile device drops with age. Some 37% of online Millennials have opened such an email, compared to 25% of Generation X and 13% of Boomers.
Here again, male Millennials are out in front of Millennial women (43% vs. 33%). Least likely to open such an email: Boomer women, at just 11%, less than half the percentage that have clicked on a social network ad.
Mobile Ads Reach 43% of Millennial Men
The story is largely the same for reading ads on mobile phones. 23% of online Americans claim to have done so, including 36% of Millennials, 23% of Gen Xers and 14% of Boomers. Millennial men and women are the most likely to have read a mobile ad (43% and 31%), and female Boomers at 8% (the only single-digit figure for this question) the least likely. By comparison, 18% of male Boomers have read an ad on a mobile phone.
About The Data: The Ipsos data is based on 12,000 online interviews conducted in March 2012 across 24 countries with adults aged 18-64. The US data is based on a sample size of 500.
