COMSCORE: ONLINE ADVERTISING WORKS BETTER FOR MILLENNIALS THAN TV ADS, AND STRATEGIES TO REACH THESE ELUSIVE CONSUMERS

 

The 79 million Millennials in the U.S. have an estimated purchasing power of $170 billion dollars per year, making them a highly attractive segment for brands to target, according to comScore vice president Bert Miklosi.

ComScore just released its new report, Next-Generation Strategies for Advertising to Millennials, highlighting the results from a recent comScore study that identifies the unique characteristics of the Millennial generation, commonly defined as persons born between 1981 and 2000.

The study examined Millennials’ responses to different types of advertising, including TV and digital, compared to older generations, and how marketers can most effectively target this large and important segment.

“Their comfort-level with the Internet and technology in general makes the digital medium an ideal platform for reaching these individuals. But as is typical with younger people when compared their older counterparts, Millennials are generally more difficult to persuade via advertising, amplifying the importance of creative and messaging optimization in driving worthwhile returns from an investment in advertising to this segment. ”

Key findings highlighted in the report include:

• The defining characteristics of Millennials include their comfort-level with new technologies and cultural diversity, as well as being accustomed to on-demand access to entertainment, continual stimulation and extreme multitasking.
• Ad breakthrough via television advertising for Millennials was substantially lower than for older generations. However, Millennials demonstrated a higher propensity than other generations to retain a lasting impression of a television advertisement.
• Millennials tend to be less interested and more difficult to connect with, capture attention, impress, convince and entertain. Millennials also appear to be more price-sensitive, perhaps due to lower disposable incomes.
• Digital advertising performs better in relative terms among Millennials than does television advertising.
• Across generations including Millennials, the presence of key creative elements in advertising, coined by comScore as theValidated Drivers, were shown to relate strongly to successful advertising.
• Millennials are highly engaged with the content that they choose to view, within both television and digital environments. Engagement has been shown to amplify the effectiveness of advertising, so when targeting Millennials, it is important to utilize engaging content to help boost returns from investments in advertising.

COMMENTARY:   Millennials – the generation born between 1980 and 1995 – use online resources, but that’s only one stop in their search for answers when they’re ready to make decisions.

So says Karen Albritton, president of Raleigh-NC-based communications agency, Capstrat.

Capstrat research uncovered some surprises about the often stereotyped Millennial generation. Albritton will discuss the research and what it means to marketers at the Internet Summit next week at the Raleigh Convention Center.

 Albritton says.

“For the first time, a generation is always able to find someone who already made a decision they’re considering, from buying a TV to going to work at a certain type of job.”

Their most trusted source of information at major milestone decision points – buying a a car, a house, an appliance – is first person experience from someone they know, such as friends or family.

Their second most trusted source would be from anyone who has already “been there and done that,” even if its an anonymous source online, Albritton says.

“They’re very social decision makers. They consider first person experience from someone they don’t know as more important than third party sources such as Consumer Reports.”

That means they might read a review or report by someone with shaky grammar and spelling and still find it relevant to them.

They value face-to-face

One finding of the Capstrat research that is a bit surprising is that while the Millennials “Are very digital people, they value face-to-face contacts. A lot of brands are seeing the value of having millennials do certain things online then brining them into a store or organization to connect.”

Albritton says marketers can do a lot of things online to make a later face-to-face connection smoother. Those include such things as having them fill out basic form information for a loan application online so a sales person can focus on selling and not administrative functions in person.

CarMax, for instance, let’s consumers do more and more of that sort of thing online, she notes.

The Capstrat research suggests

“They should love the mobile recommendations from friends type of thing.”

In fact, if they’re in a strange city, they’re more likely to go on Foursquare and see what friends have said about a good place to eat rather than asking the hotel concierge.

What does all this mean?

“It means we have to get way smarter at reaching the social influencers millennials go to. You have to reach the people who influence their decisions. They will seek it in a lot of places and you have to show up there.”

Here’s a Capstrat Video outlining results of its research on what Millennials want.

 

Here’s Capstrat on what it calls the Millennial advisory board (who they turn to when making decisions).

 

If you are going to market to today's Millennial or Gen-Y generation you must first learn to know who they are.  Here's a great infographic that introduces you to this incredibly active, techie, social, wired, indebted (student loans) generation.  I am also worried about Millennials because they often do not get involved.  They don't listen or view the news, and are mostly lost when it comes to today's political issues.  I hope they do vote in November 2012.

Click Image To Enlarge

I highly recommend that you read all my prior blog post about Millennials: November 21, 2010, December 18, 2010, January 3, 2011, January 17, 2011, June 1, 2011, September 20, 2011, September 30,2011, September 30, 2011, October 8, 2011, October 29, 2011, November 13, 2011, November 14, 2011, December 7, 2011, December 16, 2011,   That ought to keep you busy if you are conducting research on Millennials or Gen-Y's.

Courtesy of an article dated January 24, 2012 appearing in TechJournal and an article dated November 10, 2011 appearing in TechJournal

Comments

[Tommy]

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[Tommy]

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[Richard F. Sands]

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