LookStat – Microstock Analytics

The chart below shows the Top 10 Leisure Activities in the USA based on number of female participants in 2009.

The chart below shows the Top 10 Leisure Activities in the USA based on the % of participants that are women. This data will help you ensure your shoots are realistic.

The actual number of participants for the above activities are shown below to help you prioritize your efforts. For example, gymnastics and roller-blading appeal to a much smaller segment of the population than walking, working out the gym, or yoga.

Source: National Sporting Goods Association

Points to Note:

• Yoga is close to 80% female, growing, and ranked #11 in terms of total participants. When casting yoga shoots, you should keep this mix in mind.
• I was surprised that walking is 60% female in terms of participation. I normally think of this as a couples concept but the data would suggest women walking together would be a worthwhile concept.

Camping was #5 on our list of Top 10 US Activities based on number of participants. Given its importance, I decided to take a look at the demographic and gender trends associated with camping.

Camping Participation by Age & Gender

Source: National Sporting Goods Association

Source: National Sporting Goods Association

Some points to note:

• 47.5 million people took part in some form of overnight camping in 2007.
• Camping skews somewhat younger – 71.5% of participants are aged 44 or younger. I was a little surprised by this given the popularity of camping for those aged 55+. Even though it is a popular senior activity, when planning shoots, thinking younger may be a better way to go.
• There is no meaningful gender skew with roughly equal numbers of male & female participants
• There’s strong youth & adult participation supporting the fact that it’s a popular family activity

I’ll be looking at search trends, top keywords & stock trends in subsequent posts. Stay tuned!

Source: National Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association

The chart above shows the Top 10 Leisure Activities for USA participants aged 55 and older from 2007.

Points to Note:

• Swimming & Fishing were higher on the list than I expected
• Overnight camping in the USA often involves a car or a recreational vehicle (RV) (if you look at the top searches for camping, the first two terms related to RV camping)

About This Post
Yoga was ranked #2 in the data on our fastest growing recreational activities post. I’m breaking this profile into 2 parts for brevity’s sake. This post will cover the following:

• General Search Trends
• Popular Forms of Yoga
• Top Search Keywords
• Demographics of Particpants

Part 2 will cover stock photography search results and trends and will link to this one.

General Search Trends – 2004 – Present; USA

The chart above shows Google Insights for Search data  for ‘yoga’ from 2004 to the present day for the USA. There is a clear upward trend which you can see if you connect the peaks of the chart. In addition, like a lot of fitness-related terms (see our post on ‘weight loss’), there is a peak in January (resolutions anyone?) but a relatively steady volume of interest throughout the year.

Popular Forms of Yoga

The above chart shows Google Insights data for 2009 – Present for some popular forms of yoga. If you consider that Bikram & Hot yoga are thought of as the same thing then Bikram accounts for 84% of the above searches in Jan 2010.

Top 10 Search Keywords

Using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, I ran a quick search on yoga and sorted the results by global monthly search volume. The Top 10 are plotted below:

Participant Demographics

According to the Statistical Abstract  of the United States, there were 10.7 million yoga participants in 2007. In the charts below, the data are broken out by gender & age.

2007 Participation by Gender

As anyone who has ever set foot in a yoga studio will attest to, the data above are not surprising. It would be interesting to track this breakdown over time and see how it is changing.

2007 Participation by Age Group

The peak age group is 25-34 but there is strong participation in the older bands as well. Over 30% of participants were 45 or older.

Conclusions

• Yoga searches peak in January.
• Bikram/hot yoga is by far the most searched for form of yoga (15x more popular than the next highest term which was: ‘hatha yoga’.
• ‘Mats’ , ‘fitness’ , ‘classes’ are all in the top 10 in terms of keywords. Don’t ignore them on your images.
• Women outnumber men by roughly 6 to 1 in terms of yoga participation.
• The peak age segment is 25-34, but there are plenty of older (45+ particpants) as well.

Other Posts in This Series

• Top 10 Recreational Activities
• Top 5 Activities by Consumer Spending
• Activity Profiles
  • Running
  • Hunting
  • Weight Loss