Advertising is missing a trick in ignoring rise of the silver surfer

24 November 2007

MOST social networks are generally thought of as the preserve of the Facebook Generation – young, web-savvy consumers who were born in the 1980s.

According to Taylor, the problem was that consumers had not acted as they said they would in focus groups. Although very few expressed an interest in social networking, this has gone on to be one of the most successful areas of the site, with users creating profiles and forming special interest groups; some have even started meeting up for what have been dubbed “Skits” – spending the kids’ inheritance trips. In response, Eons has developed LifePath, a tool which automatically matches people with common life experiences.

Another area which has performed better than expected is the Obits section of the site, where users post online obituaries and create forums to discuss a dead person’s life. The response to the section has been so good that Taylor is planning to spin it off as a new website; Tributes.com will be in direct competition with local newspapers who, he believes, have taken the obituary market for granted, believing it was a revenue generator that would not move online.

Britain’s MyChumsClub.com is taking a different approach to both Eons and Saga. A premium over-50s social network created by Andrew Thatcher, former managing director of the British Museum, it charges £50 for a year’s subscription (the others are ad-funded and free). Bizarrely, it also plans to cap membership at 2,000 in its first year, a poor move – even the smallest social networks need 10s of thousands of users to be successful.

MyChumsClub.com is suffering from the common misconception that older consumers do not respond well to online advertising. Despite the fact that the over-50s own 80% of Britain’s personal wealth and account for 40% of consumer spending, the online advertising industry – where the majority of employees are under 40 – has wrongly decided that this demographic is message-averse. The real reason that many over-50s do not respond well to online promotions is that most adverts knowingly ignore them.

The number of over-50s using the internet is set to rise, and existing brands like Saga can generate new revenue by moving online. But as long as the online advertising industry lazily rests on its laurels and considers itself too hip to talk to the over-50s, the golden opportunity to launch profitable websites aimed at a wealthy audience will remain unrealised.