Finding men online

In a recent FanTrust blog, I covered “Woman to Woman, Online” a solid primer on women’s behaviour and websites recently published by the New York Times.

But, the paper’s statement about men’s behavior didn’t sit right. “Although men are heavy users of the web”, the article claimed “they tend not to visit sites explicitly aimed at them.”

Though its true that Heavy.com, billed as a men’s video destination, has seen audience metrics for its site slump in the last year (from 7M monthly uniques in September ’07 to 2M in September ’08), the network has built an audience for many of its original programs through deals with major media outlets catering to a male demographic.

The company signed CBSSports.com as a distribution partner for its sports series, The Burly Sports Show in June 2008. It followed up that deal by inking an agreement with Canadian sports broadcaster The Score to roll out Burly Sports and Knob Hockey League and put short-form content onto the airwaves. Additionally, Canada’s Corus Entertainment signed on to deploy and promote original Heavy programming across its male-oriented radio sites.

Break, a premier online entertainment destination for guys 15-35, grew its page views 26% from August through September 2008, and has multiple partnerships with premium content providers–including Hulu, G4 and TruTV. Advertisers can buy against content distributed across its network of sites, reaching about 60 million men worldwide.

Various Web TV networks attracting the attention of investors and advertisers are equally focused on producing male-oriented content – from For Your Imagination (Dad Labs), Revision3 (producers of Diggnation), My Damn Channel (You Suck @ Photoshop), to Next New Networks’ car and comics programming lineup.

And several recent, one-off viral successes embrace male bonding and man-speak, like How To Talk Like a Pirate and Brocabulary.

Please enter the url to a YouTube video. Please enter the url to a YouTube video.

What does this mean for the future on men’s video content, and content producers? Men’s eyes may be roaming online, but men’s content is far from becoming obsolete. As every woman knows, a man’s attention can be easily won with brains, charm and wit – and perhaps a dash of crass.