Of Age and Gender
YouTube announced an update to their stats pages yesterday, and although I’m still quite mad at them, statistics are something I can never resist.
We like a good pie chart here at Sidepodcast and YouTube delivers the goods with their latest update, in fact we also get our hands on some demographics we’ve never had the opportunity to see before - ages and gender.
First up I should say that this data set is slightly flawed, because it relies on viewers not only being logged into das tube, but also that they tell the truth in their profiles too. Additionally, it doesn’t account for viewers logged in as someone else (as so often happens here when I browse using Christine’s profile).
That said, the charts are of a certain amount of use so for the basis of this post I’ve picked stats from last week’s Turkey Preview video. It’s been live for almost 7 days and offers plenty of data to work with (at the time the screenshots were taken 4,478 unique views).
Let’s take a look at the demographic data relating to ages:
Of note, the two most popular groups are the 35-45’s and the 45-55’s. For some reason I imagined we were targeting a younger audience, in fact the group I thought we’d be targeting is the 18-25’s but that’s one of the least popular age brackets.
Following on from this we can peek into the world of the Sidepodcast viewer’s gender:
Here we see a significant proportion of the viewers being male, but I’m slightly surprised that the female viewership isn’t greater. Certainly a quick look on sidepodcast.com shows that three of the top five commentors are female.
I’m not sure what we can glean from this information, whether it tells us more about YouTube’s user demographics, our own viewer demographics or those associated with Formula One in general? As we don’t have this information for our own downloads, we can but guess. What we can do is return and compare these figures against future shows.
If you have any theories or spot any trends I’ve missed, do let us know in the comments as always.
May 17th, 2008 at 1:13 amSteven Roy said:
Three of the top commentators are female.
That doesn’t necessarily reflect the mix of your audience it only shows women know how to yak.
I wish I knew how to do smileys. Any good crash helmet shops round here?
May 17th, 2008 at 1:19 amme said:
my god, you’re a brave man! i do get the impression that the female perspective is reflected in greater numbers here than at other f1 sites, although that could just be wishful thinking?
colon : plus right parenthesis ) gives you
May 17th, 2008 at 7:32 amMichael Roberts said:
Quite surprising because you’d imagine that most of the people who use Youtube fit into the 18 - 30 age range but I’d imagine the male/female split is due to their being more male geeks than female geeks on the interwebs.
May 17th, 2008 at 11:26 ammy FA fantasy said:
All shapes and sizes.
Hmm, I wonder what you guys think of this infamous/latest Mosley letter where he says that the Formula One group has asked the FIA to accept changes to the 100-year deal, in order to “reduce its liability to tax” but has also asked for the right “to control F1 regulations and to be allowed to sell the business to anyone.
“A new president would then take over with no knowledge of the background,” he said. “And, worse, might perhaps have been elected with the support of the very people with whom we are negotiating.”
“It is possibly for this reason that the media has been encouraged by those who have an interest in undermining my presidency” he says, adding that the General Assembly’s decision about his future should not reward those “who have deliberately set out to destablise the FIA at such a crucal time in its history.”
This is curious, I rather like the bit about Formula 1 group being able to sell the business or bend the regulations. I’ll post a link in the next comment and it’s likely to drown so I hope ME can dig it out of spam division of sidepodcast.
May 17th, 2008 at 11:27 ammy FA fantasy said:
http://www.grandprix.com/ft/ft16083.html
Good link, not spam.
May 17th, 2008 at 11:38 amme said:
it’s bunkum, all of it, i considered a post about it but really it would have only gone something like this:
“Max has written a letter, it’s 100% complete and utter drivel. The end.”
i suspect that he’s dreamt up the whole thing with his best mate bernie and that charade at the spanish gp (in a glass fronted motorhome remember), was all part of the ruse.
if the members of the FIA fall for it they’re a bunch of idiots and deserve the president that they get.
May 17th, 2008 at 12:11 pmmy FA fantasy said:
Yeah, the letter sounds weird, it’s full of conspiracy theories. Poor Max, he won’t be able to attend all the VIP ceremonies at Monaco and supposedly he lives there, the Grimaldis said no. Oh well, I’d like to send him a copy of “live through this” cd.
May 17th, 2008 at 1:28 pmOllie said:
Of a similarly interesting note, I recently found out that BlogF1’s audience was somewhere in the 25-34 and 45-54 age-ranges (both 21%). Admittedly, my stats are just as dubious, but I htink it shows F1 has a broad audience, and being a technology sport, it doesn’t surprise that some of the older fans also know and enjoy using t’internet. Regarding gender, BlogF1 is apparently more even at 62% male, 38% female. But I think the males dominate more on the site in reality, which is a shame. Maybe the general truth is somewhere between you and I?
May 17th, 2008 at 3:06 pmAlianora La Canta said:
The statistics Sidepodcast have revealed for its videos quite closely reflect what the FIA found when they did surveys. To be honest, I don’t use YouTube for anything except music and Spanish lessons, and even then I rarely watch the videos (I generally prefer text and other wordy stuff rather than pictures), so anyone with my viewing habits wouldn’t be reflected in the data. YouTube is difficult to reconcile with multi-tasking, especially if like me you find it difficult to look and listen simultaneously.
I have absolutely no idea who reads/listens to my own stuff because my blog does not track individual statistics very well. It doesn’t even tell me how many unique visitors I have or downloads I’ve received, and the way it’s set up, I can’t use third-party statistics programs to find out either. Oh well…
I think a lot of what Max has written may be true, but if it is it reflects worse on him than if he’d written nothing at all. Bernie has traditionally been happy to let the FIA run the regulatory show, so if he’s negotiating for regulatory power then it means Max has failed in his mission to improve F1 via those regulations. It’s a bit rich arguing that continuing Max’s position will make things more stable when for the last two months it has made the FIA’s position less stable, and I’m surprised Max hasn’t noticed this point.
May 17th, 2008 at 3:40 pmClive said:
I find the relationship between the statistics (all of them, not just YouTube’s) and our expectations very interesting. For instance, the preponderance of old farts like myself goes against received wisdom that the young are more into the net than the old and that F1’s main support comes from the young. It seems it is not so.
Let’s face it, where would you young uns be were it not for the old fogies?
On a more serious note, however, I would suggest that F1 look to its laurels. If it is to have a future, it needs to be increasing those stats for the youth quite dramatically.
May 17th, 2008 at 4:02 pmbrendan stallard said:
““Max has written a letter, it’s 100% complete and utter drivel. The end.””
Me,
It would be something we could find agreement upon
brendan
May 17th, 2008 at 4:09 pmbrendan stallard said:
“f it is to have a future, it needs to be increasing those stats for the youth quite dramatically.”
Clive,
Interesting: where exactly does F1 make its money from?
The TV rights, surely not the races….although I don’t really know.
I think it is more popular now than ever, with far more coverage worldwide and I don’t think it has too much to worry about.
Yoof are a pain in the butt most of the time anyway, damn what they want.
Far too much attention is paid to their requirements with most modern drama consisting of utter nonsense with no character development at all, very little plot, and zero narrative structure.
A sequence of exploding helicopters, nipple counts and quite appalling behaviour.
I’d ban them from watching F1, let ‘em grow up first, then come join the fun when they are able to appreciate the real thing.
brendan
May 17th, 2008 at 4:20 pmlou said:
Sorry it’s a bit of a waffley comment.
I think so too. Its the podcasts that draw you into the site (well for me it was). Sidepodcast is a friendly community with an equal balance of people who know about just about everything in F1 (all of the rules and regs, aero stuff etc) and people who are wanting to learn more. Personally I think the reason I became such a fan of Sidepodcast was the fact I became really engrossed in F1 in 2006. I have grown up following f1 but it was only in 2006 when I started to become more and more interested and wanted to know more than what I just saw on the track. Luckily around the same time Sidepodcast started up podcasting and I was immediately drawn in. The fact that Christine was also a girl who was also reasonably new to the technical aspects etc meant that I could relate to her.
I think that the reason that the female perspective is reflected in large numbers here and not so much on the video downloads is because we all love formula 1. - That sounds stupid, let me try again. I think that there are more and more woman that are becoming interested in F1 but there do not tend to be as many (like me for example) who are almost addicted to it, and go searching for more info and discussions on it on the net. Another reason could just be that more woman prefer to watch the podcasts on their iPods or whatever, so they don’t sign up to YouTube.
On the age front, being 16 I know from experience that teenagers do not tend to be interested in f1 that much to go onto the internet and want more info. Most of my friends only know about f1 because I never seem to be able to go a whole day without talking about it. But of their own accord they do not know much about it (only the snippets about Hamilton on the news). I don’t think I have ever met another teenager that likes f1 as much as I do, only online (Scott Woodwiss comes to mind). On the other hand I have met many people in their 20s that have an interest in f1
Also I think more teenagers/ young adults are more likely to subscribe to the video podcasts via iTunes, I’m a prime example of this. I only tend to look at the videos on your YouTube if I want to refer to them/ showing them to a friend, or to watch the Sidepodcast diaries. I tend to watch them on iTunes/ my iPod and on the site.
May 17th, 2008 at 5:34 pmbrendan stallard said:
I think the reason that F1 female fans are reasonably well represented here is because of Christine: who has a headline role as presenter and not some cypher creature off to the side and holding the flag or making the tea.
She writes and presents the best pod on the web: hopefully it will attract many more females, who in my experience certainly are a pretty articulate bunch in comparison to a lot of petrol head males.
Checkout the BBC site to see the wild and wooley side of male F1 fannery.
brendan
May 17th, 2008 at 6:48 pmbrendan stallard said:
“http://www.grandprix.com/ft/ft16083.html”
F1 Fantasy,
Excellent link: thank you so much.
brendan
May 18th, 2008 at 3:05 pmClive said:
Agreed absolutely re “yoof”, Brendan - although I should perhaps clarify my intended definition of the word. To me, anyone below the age of 40 is young.
May 18th, 2008 at 3:22 pmme said:
ah-ha, that explains the 1% in the 65+ bracket above.
May 19th, 2008 at 4:29 pmAlianora La Canta said:
F1 normally makes its money from TV, race rights, Paddock Club/race advertising sales, sponsorship, and merchandise in that order. The trouble is that the costs are almost as high as the income right now…
A lot of the problem with “youth programming” is that it’s what programme makers think youth want, not necessarily what youth themselves want. Youth of today largely want social opportunities, excitement and some intellectual stimulation - none of which seems to be taken into account by TV broadcasters, which explains why the biggest drop-off in TV viewers is among the under-25s. As for F1 itself, the intellectual stimulation often comes over as mere confusion in the TV reportage and youth often don’t see the other two (though they would if they came on-line and saw the internet following F1 has…)