more than half of american adults play video games - a brave new world for advertising?

we have read often in business magazines how video game companies are doing well and that they are growth stocks. now we know for sure why - more than half of american adults play video games. not that we didn't know this - 97% of teens, nearly all teens are video game players.

we know that some of the video games teens play are very violent and in some sexually explicit and now we get a clue why the video game developers desigend them that way. aside from the fact that teens have an over supply of testosterone, they are probably thinking of the adult market.

the teens also grow up to become adults and that is what the article is saying too - the adults are still playing the games they grew up with. the habit has stayed with them over the years.

this is an interesting development not just from a stock market point of view but also for video game developers and even to advertising. there have been attempts already, but soon perhaps advertising will find a new medium to invade.

Survey finds over half of adults play video games

By BARBARA ORTUTAY – 2 hours ago

NEW YORK (AP) — After a day of dirty diapers and "Dora the Explorer," of laundry and homework time, when her four kids are finally asleep, Sarah Ninesling begins roaming the ruins of a post-apocalyptic Washington, D.C., fighting mutants to help save the survivors of a nuclear war.

The 30-year-old stay-at-home mom from New York's Long Island plays "Fallout 3" and other games like "World of Warcraft" and "The Lord of the Rings Online." She plays every day, sometimes past midnight, to escape and relax and feel a sense of accomplishment.

"You are never going to play a schlep," she said. "You are always going to be a hero."

Ninesling is not alone. More than half of American adults play video games and one in five play just about every day, according to a survey released Sunday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The survey of 2,054 U.S. adults was conducted late last year, with a margin of error of about 2 percent.

People from all walks of life play, though younger adults are far more likely to play than seniors, proof that video games are mainstream entertainment for the generations that grew up with them. In all, 81 percent of respondents between 18 and 29 said they play games, compared with 23 percent of people 65 and older.

Another Pew survey this fall found that nearly every teenager — 97 percent — is a gamer.

"As various people become more accustomed to spending their entertainment time playing games, we will continue to see this spread throughout society," said Amanda Lenhart, senior research specialist at Pew. "There are people who talk about games as a new genre, a new art form."

The gender gap between gamers was not what would be predicted by old stereotypes painting video game fans as young men who need to get outside more. Fifty percent of women and 55 percent of men play video games.

Video game companies are increasingly trying to cater to women and families. In recent years, they have pushed to expand their audience through "casual" games, ones that are easy to pick up and take less time to master. Nintendo Co. has enjoyed perhaps the greatest success — its Wii gaming console, launched in 2006, is still in such high demand it was recently sold out on Best Buy's Web site.

A surprising finding in Pew's report was the discrepancy between the education levels of gamers and non-gamers. While video games may not make you smarter, a college education means you're more likely to play them. Some 57 percent of respondents who went to at least some college said they play games, compared with 51 percent of high school graduates and just 40 percent of people who have less than a high school education. Lenhart said there is no obvious reason for the difference.

The survey also found that parents with young children and teenagers are big gamers, though a love of video games is not necessarily a result of parenting. Rather, these parents tend to be younger than parents with adult children, and are thus more likely to play.

In all, 66 percent of parents or guardians of children under 17 play video games, far more than the 47 percent of adults without kids that age. But it's not the offspring who are dragging Mom and Dad in front of the PlayStation: Only 31 percent of parents with teenagers play video games with their kids.

Ninesling, whose kids are 2, 4, 5 and 9, may play a lot of computer games, but she's strict about how much time the children spend in front of the screen: They have up to an hour each day to play the Wii, and they get at most half an hour on the computer, and not even every day.

"It's hypocritical, I guess," she said with a laugh.

Part of the lure of video games is the opportunity to interact with a story, to change the narrative if you want. The ending of "Fallout 3" depends on the choices the player makes throughout the game. Ninesling finds that interactivity more appealing than sitting in front of a television.

"Real life can suck, and games are designed not to," she said. "That's why it's important for most people."

source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iNOTN9TERbb5WaKtu0MBB1S_L7HwD94U44H85

david cook's american idol win - a study on demographics and psychographics

david cook won the american idol in a landslide win and an upset given the heaps of praises archileta got from the judges during the previous night. cowell said it - archileta wins the night. but that's not how it happened. and it wasn't just that final night, archileta more often than not got good praises from the judges almost the whole season while cook a few times got bad reviews from the judges.

personally, i think cook won american idol because he was a much more entertaining singer than archileta. while archileta had an excellent voice and was extremely consistent throughout the season, cook had a much more significant entertainment value. archileta i thought was on the verge of being a boring performer. archileta is almost like watching a cd played while cook was a performer who was alive. i also think the voice quality of cook had more character - raspy at some points, powerful in some and endearing and tender when needed. archileta was one-dimensional compared to cook who was more multi-dimensional.

that aside, the article below i think is a great study on what a marketer or advertiser can get out of studying demographics and psychographics of a target market. this was of course unintentional on the part of cook, he was not specifically targeting them, but the available data mentioned in the article is a very compelling study in target marketing consumers with the use of demographics and psychographics. it showed how two very different and unique sets of viewers can swing towards one of two choices.

cook, the brand in this article had a wide appeal but what eventually got him the votes were the older set and archileta lost on the absence of the younger set in the american idol audience. the preferences and needs are very different, including signals that connected the audience and the product.

it's an excellent study of the consumer psyche.

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'Cougars 4 Cook' sign was our first clue
By ERIN CARLSON – 1 hour ago
NEW YORK (AP) — "Cougars 4 Cook."

There it was, on a poster in the "American Idol" audience last week, after David Cook belted Roberta Flack's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" in the Key of Emo. And that slogan — not to mention the woman who hoisted it — speaks to the 25-year-old singer's popularity with, ahem, women of a certain age.

Maybe it's his edgy-yet-mainstream appeal, sly grin, sparkling hazel eyes, facial scruff, love for crossword puzzles, love for his mom and brothers. Or perhaps it's the way he broke down in tears after his final performance, a rock-anthem arrangement of "The World I Know," which he rebelliously defended from Simon Cowell's criticism.

Somewhere down the line, the Midwest-raised former bartender became a sex symbol for scores of women who are practically old enough to be his mom. And clearly, they voted.
Linda Sharp, smitten as a schoolgirl, voted 473 times for Cook after Tuesday's final performance show. The 42-year-old married mom used her land-line and cell phone — as well as her three daughters' cell phones — to show support for the singer.

"The biggest thing: He's legal, and that goes a long way," said Sharp, who's from Austin, Texas. "He's 25. That's old enough that we can openly ogle him, and we can drool over him, and it doesn't make us feel like we could be his mother."

The same couldn't be said for 17-going-on-13 David Archuleta, the kid from Murray, Utah, whose booming, mature voice belies a youthful innocence and humility that, at times, bordered on painful to watch. Cook, by stark contrast, was increasingly self-assured as the year wore on.
Sharp writes "Idol" recaps on her blog "Don't Get Me Started," which attracts the soccer-mom set, who've praised the various talents of Cook. After she posted the "Risky Business"-inspired "Guitar Hero" commercial starring Cook, one commenter said: "Mmmmmmmmmmmmm. Need I say more?" Another wrote: "Have I died? Is this heaven? I'll take it!"

Apparently these women weren't just smitten with a younger man, they were motivated, too: In a landslide victory, Cook, from Blue Springs, Mo., beat Archuleta by a margin of 12 million votes out of the record 97.5 million cast by viewers.

"American Idol" had slipped in the overall ratings this season, but Wednesday's finale was seen by 31.7 million people — about a million more than the year before, according to Nielsen data — suggesting the show swiftly gathered momentum after it boiled down to man vs. boy.
And the biggest viewer erosion in season seven was right in Archuleta's voting bloc. Ratings fell 18 percent among women aged 18-34; and 12 percent among teenagers 12-17. Also apparently in Cook's favor: Viewership has risen among people aged 50 and over, and the median age of an "Idol" viewer, once in the mid-30s, is now up to 42.

"I'm exposed to the Jonas Brothers and the `High School Musical' crowd and all of that, but as cute as I might think they are, they do make me feel maternal — not hot," Sharp said. "So watching David Cook, I think that's been a huge appeal for thirty/forty/fiftysomethings that 'We're not dead.' We might drive the soccer minivan, (but) we're just picky about what perks us up."

Apparently, they can be picky about hair, too. Michael Slezak, a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly magazine, said Cook became "almost unstoppable" after getting rid of that unfortunate comb-forward haircut in the middle of the seventh season.

"If someone had told me 14 weeks ago that David Cook would turn out to be this season's sex symbol, I wouldn't have believed it," Slezak said. "He had this hideous mop of hair and he looked a little schlubby and, you know, he was just a very average kind of guy with bad hair ... . Getting that side-part during Dolly Parton week was possibly his best strategic move of the season, even more so than his rearrangement of 'Always Be My Baby.'"

With Cook's makeover came growing confidence on stage — and tears. The grainy-voiced rocker recently wept during a show while his older brother, Adam, who is battling advanced brain cancer, sat in the audience. He cried during his hometown visit and the two-part finale.
"Another reason women really dig him is he's an emotional guy and he's not afraid to show it," Slezak said. "It's hard to resist the appeal of a grown man crying tears of joy and not trying to hide it."

Anne Ward, 50, of New York City, said she impressed by Cook's "brotherly relationship" with Archuleta and the humility he showed when he didn't react to Cowell's acid-tongued commentary. Also: his frontman mystique.

"Here's this guy who sings so great, he crosses genres, and he's vulnerable, but yet, we didn't know a lot about him. And he's sort of soulful when he sings," said Ward, who has downloaded almost all of Cook's "Idol" songs.

Ward, a longtime fan of the show, said Cook "looks like a man, and he acts like a man," and knows how to milk the camera — but not in an overt, smarmy way (think Constantine Maroulis in season four). She was initially wowed by his musical skills, but didn't "feel the sex appeal factor" until his emotional performance of "Music of the Night" during Andrew Lloyd Webber week.

"It's almost like a courtship," Sharp said of gradual allegiance from other contestants to Cook. "It's been like this slow burn, and all of a sudden our internal 16-year-olds got ignited."
The icing on the cake, Sharp said, was Cook's finale duet with ZZ Top — and the "Guitar Hero" commercial aired during the finale, an homage to Tom Cruise's pants-less lip sync to Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll" in "Risky Business."

"We're the ones that salivated so heavily over Tom Cruise in `Risky Business' that he really slid to superstardom on a trail of our spittle," she said. "So to see David Cook — who we're firmly in love with — put into those two things ... I mean, it was just a gift. It was a present."
Archuleta did the exact same spot with similar choreography that aired later in the telecast, but it lacked the feral energy and intuition that Cook brought to the role. Cook looked like he knew what he was doing — but the would the angelic Archuleta really rock out in his skivvies if his parents left him home alone?

"They're both very talented, but it really boils down to what does it for you: A sexy hot man or Webkinz come to life?" she asked. "Is your cell phone studded with glitter, or do you just have a regular cell phone like I do?"

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iwlT6ScPejtf0sICQ69bAFWmz0AgD90QVNSG1