Men Care Online about Sex, Food, Cars, and Gadgets

Earlier this week comScore released results of a study carried together with Leo Burnett advertising agency to see how male internet users behave online. In the effort to “track the virtual man” the study was to find out what men really do online. Obviously, the main reason for the study (since conducted jointly with an advertising agency) was to see how to better target men with online advertising.

So basically the study separated men into 4 categories depending on their approach to life, women and consumption of goods and services available in today’s society: metrosexuals (eagerly adopting the latest and greatest of everything, including personal care products), retrosexuals (preferring to stick to traditional male behavior stereotypes), patriarchs (seeking to protect established values - both off and online - and spending least time online out of all the four categories), and powerseekers (trying to demonstrate their financial and human achievements to everyone and spending the largest amounts of money for online purchases).

For such different types of mindsets it is logical to expect that men belonging to different categories would seek different things in their online ventures. But the study has proven that it is not exactly so - while representatives of these categories use the world wide web for different things, the topics they look for are all the same. I think this is the most interesting conclusion of the study: no matter what category a men belongs to and what thing he believes is most important for his life, he will still visit sites focused on all the same things - sex, food, health and gadgets.

So for all the girls dating nerdy geeks, chances are your boyfriend will still frequent some porn sites (or at least sites featuring more or less sexual photos) - no matter how much time he spends pretending he cares about Apple products only. The real difference is that a geek will simply know better than an average guy how to mask traces of being where he is not supposed to be - by deleting cookies and using anonymous browsing modes in the browsers like Google Chrome or Internet Explorer 8 beta.

But the fact that men care about all the same things does not mean all of them are all that similar - they do care about the same things and they visit similar websites often but there are major differences in their online behavior.

For example, metrosexuals are more focused on entertainments and various entertainment options like social networking that a website can offer while retrosexuals are very pragmatic in their use of the web and only approach it as yet another tool to have a task fulfilled without even noticing all the latest and greatest entertainment options it has to offer.

The reason why it is important to understand male behavior online is quite simple - men have always enjoyed significant buying power. But right now it looks like men are influenced too much by their wives and women seem to enjoy an ever growing buying power instead. And while there still exists a group of websites (or topics these websites are focused on) that help advertisers to target all the men in general, targeting every of the four group of male internet users may seem like too complicated. At the same time targeting women may seem easier for advertisers - and that must explain why advertisers care so much about women as the decision makers both in purchases of both personal care products and household goods as well. At that women don’t spend their time on sex-focused websites where an advertiser can hardly detract a consumer of content with an ad - be it a new shampoo or a new smartphone. So men with their declining buying power and fixation on all the same traditional topics like sex may eventually lose their appeal to advertisers.

Photo by Tanya Ryno used under Creative Commons