This week, Yahoo and AOL failed to capture a share fo the $9.15 billion that is expected to be pumped into television advertising this year. I chalked it up to a generational bias. Basically, the execs holding the purse strings simply don't appreciate the potential of the online advertising marketplace. First, they don't appreciate the extent to which older generations use those particular portals. More importantly, however, they don't understand the extent to which younger generations that make up a large percentage of primetime audiences are engaged with the so-called interwebs.

Well, Adage is reporting on a survery that may some of those ad execs might have been better off reading before they turned down Yahoo and AOL. As Jordan McCollum over at Marketing Pilgrim explains:

AdAge wrote up a survey by Alloy Media + Marketing that found that 96% of teenagers with Internet access use social networking sites at least weekly. Actually, it’s more than just teenagers: even children (okay, “tweens”) as young as nine use social networks with that frequency. Better yet, “nearly half engaged with a brand in the space in the past month.” Their time social networking is now almost on-par with their time spent with the television—and when doing both, the Internet has four times as much of their attention as the television.

If these kids are tuning into a certain network twice a week for an hour each time, then you're probably targeting them with ads. But if they're spending at least that much time actually interacting online, then there's no reason that you shouldn't be trying to reach them there as well. The difference is that on TV, your ads are being shown to consumers that don't care about them. Online, however, you can target your impressions with much more precision.