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It's a man's

world: not

in Cyberspace

YASIR ZUBAIRI

KARACHI: With the rapidly-rising population of women on the Internet, advertisers see this segment as a lucrative market, with tremendous potential for growth in women-specific websites and targetted electronic commerce.

Provisional estimates already put the female population of the Internet at 48 percent, and forecasts have them outnumbering men within this year. Across the Internet as whole, women (18 years old and above) represent nearly 42 percent of the total Internet population.

In the words of one Internet marketing strategist: Its no longer a man's world in cyberspace. Right now were just about breaking even. Cyberspace will soon be 'a woman's world'.

While men tend to frequent websites carrying financial, sports and general news, technical content, corporations and sex, women, like in other traditional media, demonstrate different tastes.

Toy retailers, portals catering specifically to women, greeting services, gift shops, personal care products and information, fashion and beauty, kids and family-specific websites are among those that women flock to.

Armed with this data, advertisers and marketing strategists have begun to actively seeking out and cater to women online.

Demographic data suggests that services and websites aimed specifically at women are advertising on websites that have a higher than average concentration of female audience.

The reason for the growing desirability of a female audience is simple: studies from the not too distant past reveal that women exert a great deal of purchasing influence in an household, controlling almost 75 percent of family finances and almost 80 percent of all purchase decisions throughout the world.

It is no wonder that smart online advertising is targeting women online by tailoring sales messages aimed specifically at them.

One such banner advertisement, which ran on a woman-specific portal, achieved 5.3 million impressions in a mere three month period. It was an ad for an online pet shop, and it simply said: "Woman's best friend: Click here to connect with your pet".