Advertisers Targeting gays? Look to 'South Park.'

Advertisers targeting gays can certainly expect to find them at the expected high-brow media haunts, but they would also be advised to look beyond them, to the unexpected.
True, gays favor the premium cable channels, consistent with the stereotypes, but gays are also big fans of Comedy Central’s “South Park.”
That's according to a new study from Simmons on the media consumption of the gay and lesbian population. The study, which was conducted with 19,000 adults in three waves over the past year, suggests that many perceptions about the media used by this demographic can be tossed out the window.
“It’s a much more complex media environment than people might think,” says Max Kilger, chief behavioral scientist for Simmons. “There are a lot of media that gay and lesbians and straight audiences share in terms of viewing and attitudes toward media. That’s good in helping dispel some stereotypes.”
Certainly, some of the media used by gays and lesbians isn’t surprising.
About 41 percent of gay people have watched Bravo’s “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” in the past month, for example, compared to 7 percent of the overall population.
But gays' media usage goes well beyond Bravo and similar channels. On cable, preliminary results reveal that gay men are most likely to watch, in this order, Comedy Central, Discovery, Spike TV, A&E, Bravo, Sci Fi, CNN, Lifetime, Fox News and HGTV.
Lesbians are most likely to watch HBO, A&E, USA, ESPN, Discovery, Lifetime, Showtime, Bravo, TNT and Starz.
MTV Networks’ Logo is not included in the Simmons study. Logo launched on June 30 as the first ad-supported network targeting gay men and women. It already has 18 million subscribers.
Among the cable programs gay men and women are more likely to watch than the average person, “South Park” ranks not all that far behind “Queer Eye,” with about 25 percent of gay men and lesbians having watched it in the past four weeks, compared to 8 percent of the total population. Also up there are USA’s “Law & Order: SVU,” notably among lesbians, Lifetime’s “Golden Girls” and Spike TV’s “Real TV.”
Simmons found that gay men and women are more likely than the average person to subscribe to cable and satellite TV, with an average 91 percent versus 80 percent of the total population. And gays and lesbians are also far more likely to subscribe to pay channels, which often have programs with gay characters.
About 42 percent of gay men and women subscribe to HBO, for instance, compared to 29 percent of the overall population. And 32 percent have Showtime, perhaps best known for its now-canceled series “Queer as Folk” and the ongoing lesbian-focused “The L Word,” compared to 16 percent of the total population.
Meanwhile, gay men and women are more likely than heterosexuals to use the internet. In fact, 83 percent of gay men use the internet and 49 percent access it with a broadband service. Straight men are only slightly less likely to use the internet and broadband, 81 percent and 46 percent, respectively.
But lesbians are far more likely to use the internet than heterosexual women, 92 percent versus 82 percent, while 57 percent of lesbians have broadband, compared to 40 percent.
“I wouldn’t pin this on affluence,” says Kilger. “We know that gay men, for example, are early adopters of technology, which influences their use of the internet.”
The Simmons study estimates the size of the gay and lesbian population at 3.86 percent of adults, or 7.18 million people who identify themselves as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, split 55 percent male and 45 percent female. Other estimates of the gay and lesbian population are far higher. New York-based media firm Prime Access, for instance, says that 7 percent of the population self-identifies as gay.
Simmons' figure does not include Hispanic gays because this group was reluctant to return surveys with questions about the respondent’s sexual orientation.
from Media Life