Youku recently commissioned Nielsen to do a user survey, the results of which were handed over to us earlier this month. I thought I’d share some of the top-level findings, to give readers a better idea of who’s using Youku.

Geography
Somewhat surprisingly (to me at least), 14% of Youku users are in Guangdong province, and another 9% in Shandong. The next eight provinces by percent share are

Jiangsu (7%)
Zhejiang (6%)
Liaoning (6%)
Beijing municipality (5%)
Hubei province (4%)
Fujian (4%)
Shanghai municipality (3%)
Henan (3%)
Hebei (3%)
Heilongjiang (3%)

Among cities, Beijing ranks first with 5% of users, followed by Shanghai with 3%, Guangzhou with 3%, and Shenzhen with 3%.

Gender and Age
Youku’s audience is about 54% male to 46% female, about the same as the total Internet user gender breakdown in China if I remember correctly.

Youku’s audience skews noticeably older than the overall Chinese Internet user demographic. While 20% of all Chinese netizens are under 18, Youku has only about 12% under that age. Overall, 11% are in the 31-35 age range, but Youku has about 17% in that bracket. Youku also has more users in the 41-50 age range, with 12% of our viewers versus about 9% overall falling into that age group.

Education and Income
Youku viewers are markedly better educated than the average Chinese netizen, too: Nielsen found that 61% of Youku users are college or vocational college-educated, compared to about 30% of netizens nationally. And while only 1% of Chinese netizens hold post-graduate degrees, 6% of Youku users do.

Income levels are also higher than the average netizen: while only 18% of Chinese Internet users earn over 3000 yuan per month, 26% of Youku users make that amount or more.

62% of Youku users have at least one credit card, with 68% of those holding more than one credit card, and 30% of Youku users own a digital video camera.