I have to admit on this one, its actually a little bit scary how much a web publisher knows about its audience.  When I came on board a year ago, I thought a lot of the "science" behind finding the right advertiser with the right message for our members would be in my control.

It is...but not to the large extent I thought it was.  This all stems from the tiny little fact that hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent on advertising and the companies behind these campaigns can get pretty detailed on exactly "who" they want to target.

So just like the old wizard behind the velvet curtain in Wizard of Oz, enter Comscore.  This is the team with the method with the money with the mojo hitting the streets and finding out who it is that visits web sites and what makes them tick.

The main blogger over there, Andrew Lipsman (great first name on this chap),  has this to say about the process:

"Media Metrix 360 brings together the two primary datasets in online metrics - panel measurement, which provides a 360 degree view of the behavior of a sample of persons; and, site-centric server data, which provides a “census” view of activity for a given web entity. The panel data provides person-level insights like demographics, time spent, engagement, and cross-site duplication (which are necessary for buyers and sellers of advertising to disentangle total ad impressions into reach versus frequency.) The server data provides a census of all activity occurring at the website’s servers - every server call"

Given the tremendous amount of effort Comscore put into building this data, I thought it would be fun to run a complete demo profile through their service on the "Outdoor Enthusiast"   Some of this is common sense....some is pretty cool....some is just down right odd and scary:

 

• While we reach a worldwide audience, there is an insane amount of outdoor enthusiasts trapped in Chicago, Ashville SC, Seattle and the East South central.
  
• Outdoor types are 1.4x more likely than not to have children, most having less than 3.
  
• When they do have kids, for some reason having baby girls over baby boys is 5x more likely.  Go figure since our audience is 80% male.  Payback time guys!
  
• Lots of our members chose to take Spanish in school as opposed to French.  I think there is better hiking in France myself. 
  
• According to our users, trade school is awesome...with a 5-1 lead in our audience.  A close second is college, but the trades win.  Smart.
  
• Most outdoor enthusiasts are not self employed, and work for someone else in a company that is usually less than 500 employees
   
• Favorite careers ?  Advertising, repairs, IT, writing computer code, Forestry (an astronomical amount) and Firemen.
  
• For those outdoor members out there who call the shots and get to control company budgets, they are often buying mainframes, wood, insurance, hosting accounts or auto parts.
   
• Google is cool, but for some reason Bellsouth.net is a favorite with our group for conducting search.  Crazy.
  
• Our members spend A LOT of time searching the internet for stuff.  Top things?  Try: podcasts, fantasy sports, outdoor gear, local news and streaming video.
  
• How many cars are in thier households ?  Usually 3, close second is four.  What kind?  Suzuki tops the list with Acura as a close second.  Insane.  Last place goes to GMC.
  
• Type of car they drive?  Staion wagon or luxury sports utility.
  
• When did they get their cars?  A: either in 2008, 2005 or 1997.
   
• A lot of these cars were in fact leased for the outdoor enthusiast by their company.  A good 12x more likely to see this.  Cool for ya'll out there living off the man.
  
• Type of  TV in house?  Argh.  Rear projection!  The overwhelming winner 12-1.  Come on folks, Best Buy is just down the street.
  
• Hikers and campers  may be stuck in the stone ages for tv, but the outdoor enthusiast is 12x more likely to have satellite radio.  This is a good point.  You can bring your radio camping, but the TV is simply to akward to carry.
  
• Too funny.  I'm going through this list on another screen as I type.  Turns out our same members are searching like manics, online, for the best deal they can get on an HD flat screen LCD tv.  Now that's what I'm talking about!
  
• When looking at the budget, for extra cash laying around the house most of it goes to music and electronics.
  
• What's in their wallet?  Try American Express Blue and Master Card gold.
  
• Lots of members are moving around the country, leading the way with on average a 10o mile move from their last location in last six months.
  
• How about investing?  Outdoor types  buy zero coupon bonds, educational loans, trade at Schwab and go 50/50 with owning a 401(k).
   
• Food budget looks like baby food, organic ( of course ), smokes, bake mixes, cat litter ( 15-1...huge), cheese, crackers, slim-fast, dog food ( another biggie), frozen pizza, frozen meats, lots and lots of gum and a good sampling of soup.

Ok...you get the point. I think I got carried away there.  But I'm only 1/4 of the way through the list, so there are tons and tons of other bits of info in there.

So this is what the world thinks about the outdoor enthusiast.  What would be cool would be to take this info over to Leisure Trends and see how it compares with their data.