US online diversity increasing

Zia Daniell Wigder | April 04, 2008, 12:23 PM

A recurring theme in globalization discussions is the fact that the global online population is shifting rapidly, with the percentage of the total hailing from the US and Europe steadily declining. Indeed, within the next three years, the total number of online users in Asia is set to surpass the online population in the US and Europe combined.

At the same time, equally important for US marketers is the fact that the composition of the US online population is also shifting at a steady pace. Our recently released US Online Population Forecast shows the percentage of Hispanic online users increasing from 30 million online users this year to 37 million by 2013. An additional 5.5 million African-American households will come online during that time. Indeed, new users coming online during the next five years are over 40% more likely to be Hispanic or African-American than Caucasian.

Given the increasing diversity of the US population, it’s not surprising that marketers place multicultural marketing as one of the key issues for 2008. For many, it's already underway: a recent survey we conducted among Web site decision makers at large US companies showed Spanish to be by far the most popular translated language for their site content. While some of these translations are for the market in Spain and Latin America, many have been targeted the US Hispanic market.**

Those companies that aren’t considering how the increasingly diverse online population will affect their businesses risk losing out to their more forward-thinking competitors that have already begun to integrate these groups into their growth strategy. Indeed, marketers that haven’t given thought to the multicultural audience in the US will risk missing out on one-third of the online population within the next five years.

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** An interesting side note on Spanish translation: Lionbridge’s Zeitgeist 2007 summary, which tallies up all language translations the localization vendor did for clients around the globe in 2007, places Spanish for Spain as the most popular type of translated Spanish; Spanish for Latin America and the US were roughly tied in second place, followed by “International Spanish” and Spanish for Mexico. Rolled up, these different translations push Spanish to the #1 position on Lionbridge’s list. By contrast, Spanish is outpaced by Canadian French on competitor SDL’s 2007 list of world languages.