In today's digital age, advertisers everywhere are searching for the perfect way to get their messages across to potential customers and motivate them to take action. Accomplishing this means targeting the best consumers with appropriately placed advertisements. The challenge is discovering who and how to target.

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	For every one minute a typical Internet user spends online with the same content, passionistas spend six minutes.

According to a recent study conducted by the search engine Yahoo! and the full-service media specialist company MediaVest, there is a prime segment of consumers known as "passionistas" whom companies should target to optimize brand loyalty and aid in business success.

The report, "Passionistas: The New Empowered Consumers," studied the behavior of online users with passions in various sectors such as health, sports, food, and entertainment and found that they have distinctive behaviors compared with typical online users—behaviors which can be harnessed by a company to create more loyal and vocal customers.

As a Yahoo! press release explains, "According to the study, highly engaged consumers called 'Passionistas' are much more likely than typical consumers to create and share content online about their passions and the brands associated with them." This means that advertisers who effectively target these passionistas can count on them to promote brand messages and speak highly about their brands to others, generating the best and most effective kind of advertisement there is: word of mouth.

"Being passionate today means digital content sharing and influencing others' brand perceptions and purchase behaviors," said Mark McLaughlin, vice president of audience strategies at Yahoo!. "Marketers who build their campaigns from the start with the goal of tapping into passions are inviting consumers to get engaged and create an authentic dialogue."

There are several reasons that passionistas are more favorable targets that the average Internet user. Below are some highlights from the study:

• For every one minute a typical Internet user spends online with the same content, passionistas spend six minutes.
  
  
• Passionistas will visit a website related to their passion three times more than a typical user.
  
  
• Passionistas search online for information about their passions 184% more than typical users and conduct more than 100 related searches related to their passions per year.

Another intriguing study finding questioned long-held beliefs about the placement of Internet advertisements. Previously, it was assumed that advertisements were more effective if they were placed on webpages that were related to the target audience's area of interest. However, what Yahoo! and MediaVest discovered was that individuals who viewed ads that were not placed on sites related to their areas of interest were about as influenced on brand preference as they were by ads placed on sites related to their areas of interest.

This important discovery means that advertisers no longer have to target their passionistas only on sites that relate to their areas of interest but can target them every time they are online. This alone will dramatically increase the number of interactions a brand has with the consumer.

This is not the first time the trend has been observed, however. Studies conducted in 2005 by Tacoda and BlueLithium found that advertisements that were placed on webpages that were not related to the consumer's area of interest were noticed more than those placed on related webpages. More importantly, another study conducted by BlueLithium in October 2006 found that out-of-context ads generated higher conversion rates.

Edwin Wong, director of consumer insights at Yahoo!, summed the study up best when he said, "If a brand aligns with a passion, it doesn't matter where the audience is."

On the net:

Yahoo
www.yahoo.com

MediaVest
www.mediavestww.com

BlueLithium
www.bluelithium.com

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