BlogAds, arguably the leading blog advertising network, has released their 2006 Blog Reader survey results
The median political blog reader is a 43 year old man with an annual family income of $80,000. He reads 6 blogs a day for 10 hours a week. 39% have post-graduate degrees. 70% have contributed to a campaign. 69% have bought music, 87% have bought books. 58% say blogs are “extremely useful” sources of information. 52% leave comments on other people’s blogs. Just 18% of political blog readers have their own blogs. (As you’ll see, that’s a lot lower than in other blogospheres.) Of these, 53% blog to keep track of their own ideas, 50% to let off steam, 36% to influence public opinion.
This is quite different than the February Harris Interactive survey of 2000 blog readers which came up with the following result:
Young males dominate blog readership. 21 percent of people who reported reading a blog within the past 30 days were males, ages 18-29.
An audience of young males aged 18-29 is probably not the best demographic for advertisers.. but a 43 year old man with an $80,000 income could very well be. Perhaps this is why DailyKos charges $5k a week for a blogad on their site.
The survey goes on to show the various breakdowns in some of the more popular blog communities & genres and illustrates the radical differences between the varying genres.
Full details of the survey are available. In addition, there are other analyses of the data available at MyDD and Democrats.com.
