The top 10 ranked sites that are used by baby boomers show similar online surfing habits, as the younger demographic. Top 10 sites for baby boomers are Google, Yahoo, Bing, Facebook, Microsoft, AOL, YouTube, Wikipedia, Ask, and Amazon. Note how similar these are to the top 10 sites for the 18-34 year old demographic group: Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Bing, YouTube, Microsoft, AOL, Fox Interactive, Apple, Wikipedia. Uncanny how similar these groups tastes have become, especially since the previous older demographic trends have shown slower technology adoption. That may have been true of those previous generations, but not of the baby boomers.

If you are a marketer that has normally targeted the 18-34 year old demographic because you thought that was the best demographic, think again, the baby boomers should not be overlooked for targeting your ad spend. Convince your companies that baby boomers should be a considered demographic to market your products/services to. These baby boomers have more cash and are more free to spend their cash, since they don’t have the same economy restrictions that have hit the younger demographic in the U.S.

The top reason for using cell phones and mobile devices (54%) in America, is for forwarding videos or photos to friends. Although more and more people now have smart phones, tablets, and laptops, a small percentage is using these devices to access social media on-the-go, which means it’s important to consider social media on mobile devices for the future, but be realistic and focus your marketing efforts and dollars on where your target audience is today.

47% of Americans that viewed a public digital video ad recalled the ad, while only 19% online recalled an ad and planned to make an unplanned purchase, based on that ad.

Video display ads in grocery stores reach 97% of the U.S. population and movie theaters are ranked #2 for reaching teens, according to the study. So, don’t discount offline digital video advertising too fast for the web, offline still has greater reach and memory recall for brands needing to reach their target audiences.

PC-based Gaming Developers should jump on the band wagon and start developing for the iPad. iPad is revolutionizing the way people play games remotely. Games from Gameloft, such as N.O.V.A. and Iron Man 2 are being downloaded at an enormous rate and they sell for $9.99. The price hasn’t seem to deter gamers, as long as the experience is great and iPad allows for developers to go beyond the box with their development. If PC-based Gaming Developers want to survive, especially with the decline in gamers playing online, iPad offers a new revenue channel.

This is certainly interesting information for online demographic targeting.

For 2010, outbound marketing budget expectations will be decreasing from 29% to 24%, but inbound marketing will be increasing from 38% to 34%.  This is an important shift for lead generation channels, since the change marks a strong shift to online from offline.  To see what works best for your marketing strategies, make sure that before you run out and spend a lot of money on social media and the other outbound marketing programs, make sure that your target audience is there and test each channel, before making a large investment.

For the Publishing Marketer, this will allow you to tap into Facebook’s 500+ million users without having to have a Facebook branded Fan Page. By using the Facebook API, will allow publishers to enhance the user’s experience at their site with social functionality.  How?  Publisher’s will now be able to place the Facebook toolbar at the bottom of a site page, which will offer a social experience with the popular ’Like’ button, friend’s list info and chat.

Marketers that advertise their products/services or Fan Pages on Facebook  will eventually have better ad targeting, since the Open Graph will allow for Facebook to gather new user data on preferences and behaviors, thus making better for targeted ads for marketers.

Overall, be careful when selecting the advertisements, programs, events and spokespeople that your company’s brand will be associated with, it can have detrimental consequences to the way your brand will be perceived and ultimately hurt your marketing ROI.

Don’t let the hype confuse you from the online marketing strategy that you have already created, but definitely research Facebook, Twitter and FourSquare to see how your target audience, is being marketed to by either your competitors or companies in general.

Social media marketing is becoming an integral part of the overall online marketing strategy mix and if you’re a good online marketer, it’s your job to review these networks as possible leads for your company. Just be careful not to exhaust your resources trying to jump on the social media bandwagon, before doing your research carefully.

Good luck!

Is your target audience actively engaging on social media networks, such as Facebook and/or LinkedIn? If yes, then you have made a case to try some moderate testing on the Social Networks, but if no, don’t get caught in the hype! Traditional online marketing is still alive and kicking, as shown today in ComScore’s latest reports that Yahoo and Google still have more traffic than Facebook.

If you know where your target audience is, then that should dictate how to focus your energies for marketing channels.