50-plus

I have been meaning to write about an article that appeared in the New York Times on the 13th May entitled: “In Shift, Ads Try to Entice Over-55 Set.”

All of these quotes should be music to my ears but I just wonder why it has taken so long for the penny to drop – as us Brits would say.

I have to admit that I am normally a bit rude about Saga – probably unfairly.

The organization has just published the first of a quarterly report that looks at the wellbeing of the over-50s.

Five years ago I identified a cohort of older people I called the Charmed Generation. A combination of final salary personal pensions, house price inflation, lack of debt and inherited money from their parents has insulated these people from the financial trauma that has afflicted their children and grandchildren and many of their peers.

This article points out that Facebook’s demographic targeting ends at 64 years old – after that you are history.

This got me thinking. I wonder how many people in the UK are on Facebook aged 50-64.

Yes,yes…a research conclusion that I totally agree with.



When you consult and write about a subject it is very tempting to extrapolate the universe of the market from your own experiences. The fact that I like something or not, or indeed the fact that the people I know have certain preferences, doesn’t mean that we are any more than a tiny niche in a large group of consumers.

Vintage TV, a digital television channel aimed at viewers aged 50 and over will launch later this year with music pundit and broadcaster Paul Gambaccini its main presenter.

The Linkedin profile of the company’s CEO says that Vintage TV

Pew Internet has just published a report about the demographics of Web video in the US - The State of Online Video.

No great shocks. Bottom line. Web video is mighty important. The more wealthy you are, the better educated you are the more likely you are to watch. No surprise there then. I am surprised at how fast the in propensity to use video (by age) changed in two years.

The “Regional trends in ageing in the UK” report from the ONS (free) is an absolute ‘must have’ report that dices and slices the stats about the UK’s over-50s by the regions in the UK where they live. You can also download the accompanying spreadsheet so you can conduct your own analysis. A big thanks to the Office of National Statistics.

According to this blog that reported on some research done by YouGov (of which I can find no trace).

Those of you who can remember the heady days of the dot.com era will know the name of Mary Meeker. She was guru, par excellence, about all things digital. Well she is still at it and has recently directed a study about the Mobile Internet for Morgan Stanley (Dec 15, 2009). She studied the rate of change spurred by the iPhone and all of the technologies and services it has spawned. Here is just one of her observations.