Where is a 25-year-old woman a 54-year-old man?

Hint... this is not about sex change operations.

A young woman is the same as an old man only in the mind of advertisers.

I was just reading this news item from The New York Times online: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/07/business/media/60-minutes-gets-younger-and-its-viewers-do-too.html and was struck by how antiquated we still are in the U.S.

Everywhere outside of the U.S. we target by way narrower demographics and have done for 20 years now.

In dozens of countries, ranging from Mexico and Brazil to England, Spain, China, Japan and many others we would target slices such as "18-24 year old women in the D SEL (Socio Economic Level)" or "35-50 year old men in the ABC+ SEL"

Three factors contributed to the change:

1. The creation of a people meter base. We have that.
2. The acceptance by advertisers and agencies that this was a better way to target consumers. Evidently, we don't have that.
3. The acceptance by many TV networks to guarantee audiences in narrower demos. This can go either way here.

We now have dozens of media channels that we didn't even dream about 20 years ago and can probably target "young women, 18-21, who like mountain biking".

Isn't it about time we move away from equating young women with old men?