As general manager of Global Research at analytics firm Hitwise, Tancer certainly has access to a lot of data. By searching through millions of searches on Google, Yahoo Search, MSN and other search engines, Tancer paints a fascinating picture of Internet statistics.
Click begins its discussion of data trends, appropriately enough, with adult entertainment.
In a chapter titled "PPC: Porn, Pills and Casinos," Tancer offers some of the most detailed analysis of adult's viewers available.
Data and adult do not mix well. Tancer explains that traditional marketing research fails miserably when looking at the adult entertainment industry due to several factors, chiefly that those being interviewed lie.
"While adult entertainment is gaining some acceptance in our society, it's rare to hear someone proudly proclaim that he likes to visit porn sites on the Internet," Tancer writes.
"But they continue to visit sites, as evidenced by the billions of dollars that change hands in the industry every year." This disconnect, or "cognitive dissonance" as Tancer defines it, forces a new, and perhaps more accurate research method: looking at the millions of everyday online searches.
The results are revealing. By analyzing more than 40,000 sites that Hitwise determined as related to adult entertainment, Tancer sees data that most of us miss. Roughly, adult sites are responsible for 10 percent of all Internet traffic in August 2007. This number is down from 16 percent in 2005. However, the top 500 adult sites account for only 56 percent of that traffic. In contrast, the top 500 retail sites drive 76 percent of that market's hits.
Tancer attributes the decline in online adult traffic to the popularity of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. But the demographics of the adult consumer are also changing quickly. Men are, as expected, the overwhelming majority of online adult consumers. Younger surfers are spending more time with their online friends than with adult material, a trend observed throughout Tancer's book.
The data can be dense, but Tancer adeptly avoids getting bogged down by the sheer weight of the numbers. Some of the findings are downright amusing, such as the fact that Republicans prefer, on the whole, wife swapping, webcams, matchmaking and voyeurism. Democrats prefer searching for specific adult entertainers and escorts. Ohio ranks the highest in traffic share of adult material. Hawaii and Alaska the lowest — except during the winter.
The analysis shows us not only what we search for, but how and why. Using deceivingly simple logic, the book approaches such questions as "why am I depressed" and "why is the sky blue" and delivers hypothetical answers, backed by scientific data.
Data can only go so far, however. At certain points, the coldly presented facts of what we search for intersect with the human spirit and the shared human condition. "How to have sex" is second in the "how to" category (tying a tie is, evidently, more vexing a problem as its number one spot indicates). Nine and a half percent of "how to" searches were for illegal or illicit activities, with marijuana growing dwarfing other searches. Finally, we are, according to Tancer, a conflicted bunch of Internet users. Our fear of rejection is second only to our fear of intimacy.
"Click" delves deeply into Internet usage patterns and extrapolates meaningful, thoughtful and practical meaning from data. As online adult continues to evolve, this book serves as a reminder that data can also indicate meaning far deeper than at first blush.