Internet marketing research company comScore released Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet. The report elaborates on many different factors related to women in general. Key findings:

• Social networking sites reach a higher percentage of women than men globally: 75.8 percent of all women online visiting a social networking site in May 2010 versus 69.7 percent of men
• women spend 30 percent more time on social networking sites than men
• women spend 8 percent more time online
• women spend 20 percent more time on Retail sites overall than men

Further reading:

• Download whitepaper
• full comScore Press Release 

Although males are playing significantly more games and are the primary drivers of total digital goods sales, North American women 25 and older are spending disproportionately large sums of money on digital goods.

This is, at least, one of the conclusions of the 2010 Digital Goods Report recently published by market research firm VGMarket and global leader in monetization solutions for online games PlaySpan.

Highlights from the report include:

• median spent on first-party purchases within Social Network games: the average female spent $55 dollars (compared to only $30 for males).
• purchases of in-game currency: females spent twice as much ($50 compared to $25)
• median overall expenditure was higher for females ($80) than males ($60)
  

Further reading:

• PlaySpan and VGMarket Publish Comprehensive Report on Digital Goods Spending @ prweb.com
• Women love to shop, even for virtual goods @ bizreport.com
• Facebook to launch PayPal-style 'Credits' in September @ netimperative.com

Sanoma Magazines Belgium recently conducted a national study to better understand the attitudes of the iPhone usage by women.

During the investigation Sanoma Magazines Belgium analysed who among them owned the popular Apple smart phone, where and how they have purchased it, how women are using the applications and how popular social networks such as Facebook are.

Key highlights from the report:

• 2.9% of the Belgian population 15+ owns an iPhone. This equals 257.000 users.
• 1.7% of women owns an iPhone, which equals 78.000 women in the North and 55.000 in the South.
• The prototype iPhone owner is male, between 15 and 44 years and is part of the higher social classes.
• Women get an iPhone relatively more often as a gift. They are relatively recent onwers.
• 6 on 10 female iPhone owners accesses at least once a week the internet thru the iPhone. 4 on 10 almost never does this.
• The most popular sites that are visited on the iPhone are Facebook, Google and newspaper sites.
• 77% of the female iPhone owners has a Facebook account.
• 36% of women have ever installed an app on their iPhone. Only 19% of them has actually paid for it (= 7% of the female iPhone users) Women prefer free apps with ads above paying apps.

Women with children have long been an attractive target group. The main reasons:

• the enormous influence members of this demographic have over household purchase decisions
• the wide variety of goods they generally require

Here are three cases of brand owners who try to stimulate positive word of mouth on the web by engaging with female bloggers with children.

UK: P&G Fairy Liquid bottle relaunch
P&G partnered with "mummy bloggers" to spread the news that its traditional white Fairy Liquid bottle was being reintroduced to celebrate the brand's 50th birthday. The thinking behind this was that good feedback from these bloggers can make a real impact, because they carry significant weight among their peer group.

US: Specialist ad networks for female bloggers
In the US, female bloggers are already being actively courted by specialist ad networks such as Glam Media.

South Korea: "Coke Friends" to create word of mouth for Coca-Cola
In Seoul, bloggers are introduced to Coca-Cola and probed about ways Coke can better communicate with local bloggers, especially young mothers, as a way to get Korean families talking about more Coke.

Further reading:

• Marketers woo "mummy bloggers" in UK @ warc.com
• Coke Taps Mommy Bloggers in Korea @ adage.com

According to the study by Lucid and Lisa Finn the top two reasons why women with children use Twitter are:

1. networking/meeting new people (77%)
2. keeping up with news (60%)

If they follow a business on Twitter, their expectations are:

• that the business provides useful information in its Twitter feed (68%)
• a desire to find out about the company's products or services (67%)
• to get good deals (60%).
• because they're already customers. (67%)
• to follow up on a retweet (41%)

Further reading:

• Moms Is A Subset of Women @ mediapost.com
• 2010 Marketing to Moms on Twitter Survey Results & Report $149 @ momreports.com

According to a new study released earlier today by Oxygen Media and Lightspeed Research, young women are becoming more and more dependent on social media and checking on their social networks.

Key highlights from the report:

• 21% of women age 18-34 check Facebook in the middle of the night
• 63% use Facebook as a networking tool
• 42% think it’s okay to post photos of themselves intoxicated
• 79% are fine with kissing in photos
• 58% use Facebook to keep tabs on “frenemies”
• 50% are fine with being Facebook friends with complete strangers

Further reading:

• The First Thing Young Women Do in the Morning: Check Facebook [STUDY] @ mashable.com
• Study: More Than One-Third Of Women 'Addicted' To Facebook @ mediapost.com

BabyCenter's 2010 Mom Social Influencer segmentation study recognises 5 unique segments of social moms, broken down in 2 categories: Influencers, and the Influenced.

The Influencers are:

1. Field Experts: stay-at-home moms with a topical focus on parenting.
2. Lifecasters: Millennial moms who live their life in public.
3. Pros: mom bloggers who have turned their passion for social into a profession.

The Influenced are:

1. Butterflies: young professionals who put the social in social networking.
2. The Audience: the largest group of social moms who listen and take it all in.

Also interesting:

• Pregnancy and birth triggered 94% of moms to seek out information and share opinions with others online.
• 18% of social moms wield 78% of the overall influence.
• Field Experts and Lifecasters make up 16% of audience and wield 67% of the influence.
• 91% of social moms use Facebook for socializing.
  

Further reading:

• Social Media Moms Diced and Sliced @ mediapost.com

Or at least, according to this YouTube video made by Porter Novelli Atlanta:

Found at I heart social media.

By the way: if you want to keep posted about the latest trends in social media for businesses,

• visit the conversity.be blog
• subscribe to the rss feed, or
• opt in for blog updates via e-mail

For its"What Women Want From the Web" Summer 2010 report, Unicast polled 516 adult U.S. female residents.

Highlights from this report:

• 95% of women plan to go online this summer
• 62% notice and/or interact with online advertising.
• 53% (vs 67% overall) of the women aged 18-24 use the web more than other age groups for all activities except keeping up with news

The ads that resonate with women:

• 46% include sales, discount codes
• 31%  feature creating/submitting an entry to win a prize
• 24%  provide customized local information
• 22%  offer interactive surveys/quizzes

Further reading:

• What Women Want From the Web Report (pdf) @ unicast.com
• Study: What Women Want Online @ adrants.com
• Study: What Women Want (In Online Ads) @ mediapost.com

From Parenting And The Internet at mediapost.com:

• Most children who spend time on social networking or gaming sites do not play unsupervised. Nearly 70% of Moms retain control of where and when their 8-13-year-old children play.
• The majority of Moms know their children's passwords and nearly all have established appropriate and clear online rules and guidelines for them.
• The majority of Moms indicate their children may not join a social networking site unless a parent joins as well