This post on Facebook NZ demographics originally published in 2009, has been one of our most popular posts over the past 5 years, so we have decided to update it with 2014 data and make a comparison.
So, what happened 5 years later? How many Kiwis are on Facebook now and which age group has been growing the most over the last 5 years?
Read on and find out more…
Or jump to the post from 2009 by clicking here: Facebook New Zealand Demographics – Age Distribution and Gender Statistics
2014 Facebook NZ demographic data
- The overall female proportion has slightly decreased (compared to 2009) to 54.3% and male numbers increased to 45.7%
- Most Facebook users are in the age range between 18-24 and 25-34 (22.5% each).
- However, the older demographic has increased – with 22.4% being aged 45-65
Proportion of age groups in 2014 (socialbakers.com)
User age distribution (socialbakers.com)
How popular is Facebook in New Zealand?
We took our data from Alexa.com and found out that in the New Zealand country ranking, Facebook ranks on third position now, behind google.co.nz and google.com. Trademe.co.nz fell back to the fifth position, and YouTube is now on fourth position.
Source: Alexa Ranking (Alexa.com)
Next, we want to take a look at the Facebook advertising tool, to find out more about Facebook demographics and how many Kiwis can be reached by Facebook.
Key insights on the Facebook NZ Demographics data in 2014
Interestingly, the male vs. female ratio in 2014 is quite similar to the one in 2009. With the major difference that for the group aged 20-24 years, there is a greater percentage of male Facebook users than females.
In the age group from 25 to 29 years the male/female ratio is nearly evenly high. Moreover we can see that as age increased, so does the percentage of females – with more than 60% of Facebook users aged between 60-64 years being female.
% of each gender on Facebook, by age range (% of those who stated a gender)
Increasing number of “older” age groups on Facebook
Also, in 2014 we have divided the number of Facebook users at each age range (from Facebook’s advert tool) by the total number of New Zealanders in each age range (from the NZ census website).
We discovered that an accurate picture of Facebook users cannot be drawn, as it seems that some users have more than one Facebook account (we see in the chart below there are more than 140% Facebook accounts compared of the male population in the 18-24 year old age group). Is this multiple accounts? Is this a younger male audience ‘pretending’ to be older?
Although it is difficult to conclude anything specific about the distribution of users on Facebook we can see clear tendencies for the different age groups. The highest proportion of people using Facebook is in the age group from 20-24 years.
Interestingly the male proportion is higher in the age groups from 15-19, 20-24 and 25-29 than the female one and is afterwards dropping below the female one. In the age group from 60-64, only around 30% of male Kiwis are on Facebook, being far less than females with around 47%.
What we found interesting also, is the appearance of the distribution curve in 2009 and 2014. The 2014 curve is not as pronounced towards the younger audience and has more rather linear distribution across the age groups.
Estimated percentage of the NZ population on Facebook, at each age range, for each gender and total for 2014.
The fine print
With an increase in the numbers of people with Facebook accounts, audience targeting options for Facebook ads have also increased.
For example, targeting on behalf of interests, behaviours and connections is now also possible. Moreover Facebook offers a “More Demographics” section which enables to refine targeting (Unfortunately quite a few options are just available in the US).
“More Demographics” section
We also wanted to take a look at the Potential Reach for different age groups on Facebook. Simplified, the potential reach tells us, how many people we can show our ad to.
The chart below shows the Facebook potential reach, for 3 segments, comparing 2009 and 2014. In 2014 there are 2,400,000 (according to Facebook potential reach) New Zealanders on Facebook (age 18+), which represents 56.6% of the total New Zealand population.
Moreover, the proportion of female Facebook users, married and aged 30+ has increased from 104,430 to over 280,000 women in the last 5 years.
Comparison of the amount of Facebook users in certain segments 2009 and 2014
As seen Facebook remains a strong community for New Zealanders, and because of its reach, it can be a very effective way for online advertising.
Final thoughts
We have seen that Facebook has increased its numbers of users significantly over the last 5 years. Advertising on Facebook can be very beneficial as the target group can be narrowed down to a very specific level.
If you want to get started in using this powerful platform in reaching your target audience or want to optimise your existing Facebook ad campaigns, send us a message or give us a call at +64 9 9201740.
P.S. Want an update? Check out the 2015 Facebook demographics and usage statistics here.
2009 FACEBOOK NZ DEMOGRAPHICS – AGE DISTRIBUTION AND GENDER STATISTICS
A couple of weeks ago we posted on New Zealand Facebook Statistics, in particular we reported:
- There are more Kiwi women on Facebook than men (57.5% female vs 42.5% male) and
- Most of the New Zealand users of Facebook are in the 18-24 or 25-34 age range.
This led me to wonder, what is the percentage of each gender in each age range? Are there any interesting trends? Are there any age ranges where men are more common?
And also, now that Facebook is the most popular site in NZ (aside from Google), what percentage of the NZ population is on Facebook now, and how does that change for each age range?
By the way, in case you haven’t heard, Facebook overtook TradeMe in July as the most popular destination site for New Zealanders – here’s a graph from Google Trends for websites.
If you want to know what the other most popular sites in NZ are, here’s the Top 100 according to Alexa and the top 20 according to Hitwise.
Graph of visits to Trademe and Facebook (New Zealand visitors only)
Let’s use the demographic information from the Facebook advert tool to understand New Zealand’s Facebook demographics a bit better.
The gender gap is strongest for older users
The younger age ranges are much closer to gender parity than the older age ranges.
The 20-24 age range has the highest proportion of men, with 47% male and 53% female. As the age increases though, the percentage of men decreases. The 50-54 age range has the lowest proportion of men, 35% male and 65% female.
% of each gender on Facebook, by age range (% of those who stated a gender)
Nearly all young kiwis are on Facebook
A famous quote about Tolkien’s The Lord of Rings is that the world is divided into two types of people, those who have read it, and those who are going to read it.
It could be that the same is true of Facebook in New Zealand – kiwis are divided into those who are on Facebook already, and those who are going to be on Facebook soon!
Dividing the number of Facebook users at each age range (from Facebook’s advert tool) by the total number of New Zealanders in each age range (from the NZ census website) shows that the younger age ranges are almost totally assimilated already.
Nearly 90% of the 20-24 age range is on Facebook already. The percentage of Kiwis on Facebook falls quickly as age increases – only 30% of 40-44 year olds are on Facebook. And the percentage continues to fall slowly as age increases – only 17% of the over 60’s are on Facebook.
Estimated percentage of the NZ population on Facebook, at each age range, for each gender and total.
Of course this is just an estimate, and in particular there is no guarantee that the number of users reported by Facebook is indeed correct. But given the popularity of Facebook in New Zealand, it can’t be too far wrong.
The fine print
Facebook allows advertising on a cost-per-click basis as we illustrated last time. And these adverts can be targeted by age, city, gender, education, relationship status and keyword, allowing very strong demographic targeting. The advert tool has these options for the advert targeting:
Demographic targeting options for adverts on Facebook
As you can see, the estimated number of people is shown, and this is where I got the estimated number of NZ Facebook users at each age range from, including gender:
Estimated total number of people in NZ on Facebook
Estimated number of women over 30 in NZ on Facebook
Estimated number of married women over 30 in NZ on Facebook
Plenty of other blogs have used the same trick to get useful insights about the demographics on Facebook. Here are a selection of some of the best:
- Facebook Market Research Secrets and 2/3 of Facebook users aren’t (necessarily) women by Alec Saunders
- Facebook Secretly Reveals Demographic Data on the All Facebook blog
- Where Does Facebook Grow From Here and Facebook Growth By Country and the Slowdown in App Usage on the O’Reilly Radar blog
- Facebook Gender Demographics – A Comparison by Country on the Ad Chap blog
Take action now
If you want to try an advertising medium that will reach a very high proportion of New Zealanders, then Facebook should be your second choice after Google Adwords.
FIRST incorporates Facebook ads in the overall online marketing mix (which also includes SEO, Adwords PPC and Performance Advertising, all tracked by Google Analytics).
