Just stumbled upon a very complete and enlightening survey ‘investigating behavior, trends, preferences and attitudes across all forms of entertainment activity’ among a representative national demographic sample of UK consumers that is a thousand of male and female between 15 and 54 years old (with the 24 to 54 group weighting for 76% of results).
The 2008 Digital Entertainment Survey commissioned by Wiggin and done by Entertainement MediaResearch covers a wide range of activities from traditional to digital topics. I’ll most probably post quoted data in the coming days as regards to on-demand programs, videos and mobile content topics for this quality data can act as a foretaste of coming adoptions in the major European countries (if you want to go ahead today here’s the 30 page summary report and the 250 page full report). But for now what strikes me first was the insights on the adoption and consumption of Social Networks within UK population:

- Social Network sites are the first online activity regularly (34%) or occasionally (19%) claimed by all age groups. True it comes behind ‘traditional media’ like listening to radio, reading books, watching subscription TV and reading newspapers and magazines. But while it means that traditional media is still number one for all age groups in time spent and also in emotions linked to the media (by emotions read the negative impact that would be made on consumers who would have to stop engaging with these traditional activities), it also stresses the fact that Social Media as the 6th place of leisure activities in all age groups is acknowledged as a mainstream media.

- The potential to content distribution growth on SN platforms looks bright: 27% respondents in all age groups would like to access at some point all their content (including music and video) through the SN platforms – the main reason to do so being the opportunity of both content sharing and content interaction with their communities of predilection

- Potential is not limited to content viewing. It spreads out to search and retail environments with 30% respondents using peer to peer recommendations to find out new music – with an initial purchase objective for 5% of them- and 20% ending up to actually buying music through social recommendation
- The branding potential is not to be neglected either -quite the contrary. In these days of AOS, 25% of the youngest age group (15 to 24) would actually accept a brand as a friend. Advertisers who find it harder and harder to market to this age group are being asked for a much stronger presence than just display advertising. Attractive quality content and genuine participation are the minimal requirements.

Of course the picture is very different if you look at activities analysis split by age groups – and even gender groups. Attitude difference towards technology adoption, impact on leisure activities and digital devices ownerships are clearly highlighted. Traditional view of young male audience ‘having it all’ vs older female feeling somewhat ‘left behind’ does still apply. Education is still key to help the older audience understand firstly and embrace secondly the digital media and its entertainment possibilities. What the report emphasizes plainly is that this audience is a very receptive one just waiting to be seduced.