Virtual worlds for children and teens have been growing in popularity recently: the market share of visits to a group of seven children’s and teens’ virtual worlds (sites shown below) has grown by 68% in the past year. (week ending 4/28/07 vs. week ending 4/29/06). Runescape is by far the #1 site, with 44% of visits to the category.

Webkinz, Club Penguin and Stardoll have been the fast movers over the past year. When comparing the weeks ending 4/29/06 and 4/28/07, the market share of visits to Webkinz was up 1141%, Club Penquin up 545%, and Stardoll up 275%. You can see on the chart below that visits to most of these sites surge when school is out: summer vacation, Thanksgiving, Christmas break, and most recently, spring break. Average session times can be very long, with the average visit to GaiaOnline lasting more than 44 minutes, Neopets at 35 minutes and Stardoll at 26 minutes. A few weeks ago I saw presentations from Habbo and Stardoll at the Millennials Conference. Habbo has a very large user base in Europe, and both sites are finding creative ways to partner with advertisers in-game. Expect a lot more growth in this area.