Moms Depend on Web Search: Study

Eighty-nine percent of household moms use the Internet at least twice a day, and 86% say they rely on search engines to find Web information. And advertisers looking to sell to mothers should be sure to integrate search marketing into their campaigns, a new study from digital marketing firm DoubleClick found.

The study, “Searcher Moms: A Search Behavior and User Study” found that offline sellers can benefit almost as much as e-commerce merchants from the access search gives to the mother demographic. Seventy percent of mothers use search engines to research an online purchase, but 57% said they also use Google, Yahoo and their ilk to study up on offline buys; 64% use search engines to locate brick-and-mortar stores for their shopping.

Specific to consumer packaged goods, 72% of the moms said they use search engines to compare CPG prices at different outlets. Seventy-one percent reported using online search to turn up product information, and the same proportion searched to find retail locations.

“Manufacturers and marketers targeting this audience through any kind of advertising campaign should be sure to integrate a well-planned search campaign,” said Scott Haiges, president of ROI Research, which conducted the study with Microsoft. “Sixty-four percent of women reported using a search engine to gather more information after seeing an advertisement.”

DoubleClick operates an online ad networks and is parent to Performics, a search engine and affiliate marketing firm. The company is in the middle of an acquisition bid by Google.

The survey studied the Web behavior of around 1,000 U.S. mothers, both in general search and in regard to eight product categories.

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