Let’s start with interest. Looking at the percent of area residents who proclaim that they are either “very interested” or “somewhat interested” in NASCAR, we found that the Paducah, Kentucky Designated Market Area (DMA®)—an area that also includes Cape Girardeau, Missouri and Harrisburg and Mt. Vernon, IL—has the highest concentration of NASCAR fans with 24.3% of the area’s estimated 762,617 adults professing their love of NASCAR. By comparison, only 15.1% of all U.S. adults are interested in NASCAR, which means Paducah-area residents are fully 61% more likely than the average American to have NASCAR on the brain.

An estimated 16.2% of all U.S. adults report watching NASCAR events on TV. But when its race day in Paducah, you can expect nearly a quarter (23.7%) of area residents to be tuning in on television making the market the top place to find NASCAR-watching fans.

Fans can get their NASCAR fix 365 days a year on NASCAR.com. Residents of Topeka, Kansas are 70% more likely than the average U.S. adult to have visited the racing organization’s official website. In fact, 5.9% of the Topeka area’s estimated 346,881 adults make an online pit stop at NASCAR.com during a typical 30 day period.

Residents of the Wheeling, West Virginia-Steubenville, Ohio market are the most likely to wear their NASCAR love on their sleeve, literally. We find that 3.9% of the area’s 253,651 adults have purchased NASCAR licensed apparel in the last year. By comparison, only 1.4% of all U.S. adults bought NASCAR-licensed apparel, which means Wheeling-area residents are fully 2.8 times more likely than the average American to don the NASCAR logo.

For more information on local market estimates from Experian Simmons, visit our website.

There are a few things I have yet to accurately predict with Internet data, namely political races and sporting events. Politics is tricky given the existence of confounding variables in visits to political sites. Sporting events, as skill based competition, have little relationship to search volume or Internet visits. That being said, there’s no reason why we can’t have a little fun with the data.

On our Experian Marketing Forward Blog we have some great posts comparing the two geographic markets of Green Bay and Pittsburgh (here and here). With Experian Hitwise, using the official team sites for the Packers and Steelers (assuming visitors to each site is a good proxy for a team fan) we can analyze the difference between the two.

At Experian Hitwise, we have the ability to report, in aggregate on the VantageScore bins for visitors to sites and categories (VantageScore is a grade-based credit scoring system, A = best credit, F= worst credit).

Here’s the comparison of visitors to the Steelers’ and Packers’ websites over the last four weeks:

While the latest Vegas odds are still showing Green Bay favored by three. The spread in VantageScore for visitors to the two sites shows a much stronger gap. While this might not help predict Sunday’s winner, I’m guessing that Packer fans have been able to finance better last-minute LCD TV purchases for the game.

I love this time of year. Anticipation builds around the match-up, Green Bay vs. Pittsburgh, Danica Patrick plus Jillian Michaels on the eagerly anticipated Go Daddy commercial, and whether the Super Bowl could cause a heart attack mid-game.

But beyond Packers vs. Steelers (I’ll leave the Patrick vs. Michaels match-up for a post game analysis) there’s another interesting match-up for my online data peeps; is social gaining on search as a navigational tool. First lets look at a chart of “Super Bowl” searches over the last three years.

First, we should note that over the last three years, U.S. searchers have realized that the Super Bowl is spelled as two words, not “superbowl.” Also by looking at this chart you might guess that, by search volume, there is less interest for online Super Bowl content. A separate analysis of visits to the official Super Bowl site however, indicate that we’re seeing a greater pregame surge in visits than in previous years. So why is traffic share on the term “Super Bowl” declining this year?

The chart above compares upstream traffic to Superbowl.com for this week versus the week before Super Bowl last year, you can see that traffic from all three search engines to the official game site have dropped, while traffic from Facebook has more than doubled.

Is this a sign that, as a navigational tool, social is gaining on search?

On a separate note, one of the reasons that I love working at Experian Marketing Services is the sheer volume of data that we have at our disposal, both online and offline. Check out these posts here and here from my esteemed colleague Bill Schneider on the depth of our market data comparing Pittsburgh to Green Bay.

To provide those insights, we conducted a detailed market analysis using a wide variety of data sources including research information from Experian Simmons, Hitwise, and the Mosaic Consumer Lifestyle segmentation solution, which defines the predominant household types for each area (as featured in yesterday’s post: Cheeseheads vs. Terrible Towels). Today, we delve further into the hearts and houses of Green Bay and Pittsburgh area residents.

GREEN BAY FANS PACK THEM IN FOR TAILGATING
Green Bay area residents are more passionate about tailgating compared to their rivals in Pittsburgh. Among those who identify themselves as NFL football fans, Green Bay fans are 1.45 times more likely than Pittsburgh fans to have participated in a tailgate party within the past 12 months. They are also better equipped to tailgate due to a higher ownership rate for midsize SUVs, and both light duty and full size pickups (Road & Track magazine top-rated picks for tailgating), compared to Pittsburgh fans.

STELLA AND STEELERS GO TOGETHER

With every tailgate comes a beverage of choice, and in today’s analysis we’ve found that Bud Light and Budweiser are the light/low calorie and regular domestic brands of beer favored the most by both Green Bay and Pittsburgh fans. However, Pittsburgh fans are 1.56 times more likely than Green Bay fans to down a few of premium brand, Stella Artois. Notably, along with its best selling brands, Anheuser-Busch plans to devote a portion of its multi-million dollar ad spend to this Belgian import.    

FANTASIZING ABOUT FOOTBALL

While all that tailgating is going on, Green Bay fans might also be boasting about their latest fantasy sports selections. They are 1.34 times more likely to say that they participate in a fantasy sports league compared to Pittsburgh fans. That’s not to say that Pittsburgh fans don’t enjoy their fantasy sports, indexing above the national average for visiting fantasy sports and football websites.

PLAYING IN THE GREAT OUTDOORS

Packers and Steelers fans enjoy being out in the elements, so chances are you’ll probably never see a dome over either Lambeau or Heinz Field. The most popular Green Bay football fan activities, with a higher participation rate compared to Pittsburgh fans, are: golfing, camping, state fairs, hunting, power boating and motorcycling. In the Pittsburgh area, with its impressive network of recreational trails, residents are 1.23 times more likely to in-line/roller skate and are 1.36 times more likely to play hockey, compared to Green Bay. Off land analysis shows that despite Green Bay residents’ close proximity to Lake Michigan and a multitude of water sport opportunities, Pittsburgh fans are more likely to spend time on the water, namely: canoeing, kayaking, sailing, and fly fishing.

THROWING DEEP VERSUS HANDING OFF

Each year Super Bowl advertisers try to reach their audiences across broadly defined demographics with little ability to measure the direct impact of their super-sized investments. It’s the equivalent of throwing a “Hail Mary” and hoping the receiver will leap above the clutter of defenders and catch the ball. Direct marketers, however, are using the behavioral and attitudinal data we’ve shared here to deliver their messages to a precisely targeted sub-audience. For marketers who want to be relevant and target accurately, this capability is the playmaker that scores a game winning touchdown every time.  

Click here for the full article

Blog post author: Bill Schneider, VP, Experian Marketing Services.

We’d love to hear your stories and how you’ve used lifestyle data. Please leave your comments or feedback below.

Below is a list of the top 15 programs, according to Experian Simmons’ National Consumer Study, that registered Democrats and registered Republicans both watch at above average rates. To understand how a program can score high for both Republicans and Democrats, it’s important to know that registered Republicans make up 24% of the U.S. adult population and registered Democrats account for 34% of adults. Voters registered with another political party or as independents account for 15% of the adult population and 21% of adults are not registered to vote. Six percent of U.S. adults in the study either did not know if they were registered to vote or did not know which party they were registered with. Therefore, it is entirely possible for programs to perform well among both Republicans and Democrats when compared with other U.S. adults.

Topping the list of unifying shows is The Good Wife on CBS. Republicans are 19% more likely than the average American adult to tune into this hit show starting Julianna Marguiles as the wife of a Chicago politician caught up in a public sex affair and political corruption scandal. But Democrats too flock to The Good Wife-now in its second season-at rates 24% above the U.S. average. CBS actually secures several spots on the list of programs popular among viewers on both the left and the right of the political aisle, including The Mentalist, Numb3rs, How I Met Your Mother and NCIS.

HGTV’s Income Property is the highest ranking cable show on the list, which Republicans and Democrats tune into at rates 14% and 20%, respectively, above the national average. The show about converting a part of your home into an apartment to help with the mortgage confirms that in these tough economic times Democrats and Republicans alike can use all the help they can get.

The relatively new Human Target on Fox, based on a DC Comics comic book, has a bright future in store if it can continue attracting both Democrats and Republicans viewers.  Just ask the creators of ABC’s Desperate Housewives. Desperate Housewives, now in its seventh season, has the unique honor of being the only program on the list that appeals equally to both sides. Republicans and Democrats are both 16% more likely than average to tune in each week to find out what the ladies of Wisteria Lane have cooked up.

We all know that later this month when President Obama and Republican leaders meet in Washington to discuss a roadmap to bipartisan cooperation that they won’t agree on much. That said, they’ll always have The Good Wife to bridge the divide. Happy Thanksgiving!

Examining weekly trend data from Experian Simmons DataStream, we found that in the past year alone, there has been a 65% relative increase in the share of young adults who believe that video games are more entertaining than television. In fact, as of September 27, 2010, more than a quarter of 18 to 24 year-olds (28%) agreed that video games were more entertaining than TV.

Furthermore, one-in-five 18 to 24 year-olds (21%) today spend more time playing video games than watching TV, a relative increase of 48% in the past year. Many games remain split with 14% of 18 to 24 year-olds watching TV while playing video games, up just slightly from this same time last year.

This trend is noticeably more pronounced among young men, but women are closing the gap. Simmons DataStream shows that 37% of 18 to 24 year-old men find video games more entertaining than TV, compared with 10% of women the same age. However, during the past year, the share of young women who find video games more entertaining has increased by 65% compared to a 59% increase observed among young males.

This trend may be driven, at least in part, by the proliferation devices that support video games, including smart phones and tablet PCs.

You can find more information  on our website about technology adoption and use of mobile phones. For more information on Simmons DataStream weekly reporting of nearly 40,000 consumer variables, visit our website.

Experian Simmons examined the political party registrations of viewers of over 700 television programs measured in the Spring 2010 Simmons National Consumer study. We found that registered Republicans and Democrats, indeed, have different preferences in entertainment programs. But especially noticeable was the preponderance of highly rated Nielsen programs at the top of the Republican list. Not all shows that skew Republican are ratings darlings, of course, but programmers should take note of this fact if ratings are their foremost goal.

Republicans:

When looking at programs on broadcast TV, we see that Republicans tend to gravitate towards reality shows that center on some sort of competition. In fact, Republicans are 32% more likely to watch The Amazing Race on CBS than the average American adult. They’re also 24% more likely to watch American Idol on Fox and 18% more likely to watch America’s Got Talent on NBC. The Simmons data provides some evidence that it’s the competitive angle of these shows that is attracting Republicans. Specifically, Republicans are fully 29% more likely than the average adult to watch the results show of Dancing with the Stars on ABC and just 17% more likely to watch the non-results episodes of the same show.

Republicans tend to gravitate towards reality shows that center on some sort of competition.

When it comes to cable entertainment programs, Republicans tend to prefer lifestyle programs on HGTV and TLC. Republicans are also found in high concentrations among many adventure/documentary show audiences, like Ice Road Truckers on History and Deadliest Catch on Discovery. And finally, big families are big draws for Republicans with 18 Kids and Counting and Jon & Kate Plus 8, both on TLC, attracting more than average concentrations of Republican viewers.

Democrats:

On the left side of the broadcast dial, we see that registered Democrats tend to be drawn to crime and legal dramas like Law & Order and Law & Order: SVU, both on NBC. We also see higher concentrations of Democrats tuning into broadcast shows featuring female characters playing central or leading roles, such as Brothers & Sisters on ABC, Medium on CBS, 30 Rock on NBC and the Good Wife on CBS. The Good Wife, actually, has higher than average concentrations of both registered Democrats and registered Republicans. Given that the program is about the wife of a politician, it’s not such a surprise that registered voters from both sides of the aisle tune in.

We also see higher concentrations of Democrats tuning into broadcast shows featuring female characters playing central or leading roles.

On cable, we see high concentrations of registered Democrats tuning into character-driven dramas, like Dexter and United States of Tara, both on Showtime. Democrats also flock in disproportionate numbers to cable reality shows. But unlike the competitive reality shows favored by Republicans, Democrats prefer observational reality shows where they get to peer into the lives of celebrities or unique and extraordinary people.

For more information about the in-depth consumer behaviors, attitudes, lifestyles, brands and media measured in the Simmons National Consumer Study, visit our website.

Watching online streaming video is becoming ever more popular among adults of all ages. Nonetheless, 18-to-34 year-olds are the most likely to watch online streaming video. In fact, the gap between 18-to-34 year-olds and older adults when it comes to watching online streaming video has continued to increase. In January 2008, young adults maintained a 6 percentage point lead over adults age 35 and older. In March 2010, the lead had increased to 11 percentage points.

Males are more likely to watch online streaming video than females, but females are increasingly involved in this activity as well, with 12% of males and 9% of females watching streaming online video as of March 15, 2010.

Expect the number of U.S. adults watching videos, TV programs and movies online to continue to increase as specialized websites multiply and traditional media websites like NBC.com, ABC.com or TBS.com continue the move towards streaming video content, including full episodes of popular TV shows.

In 2009, the share of American adults age 21 and older who drank at least 1 glass of Moët & Chandon champagne in the last 30 days increased a relative 32 percent in the month after the awards show among adults who either watched the last Academy Awards on NBC or who planned to watch the next ceremony. Meantime, the percent of non-Academy Awards show viewers who drank Moët in the last 30 days remained unchanged after the airing of the Oscars proving strong evidence that the increased consumption among viewers was a direct result of the champagne producer’s exclusive deal with the awards show. Should the audience reaction following this year’s annual show be on par with last, Moët & Chandon will have something to toast to.