Keeping Up With The Millennials

Here are some new findings by comScore about how to advertise to Generation Y.

Generation Y, or the Millennials are easily distracted by the myriad of things vying for their attention. Advertisements don’t make much of an impression on them. “It’s just too darn easy for them to get distracted”, notes ComScore.

Keeping up with Millennials can be difficult especially if you are trying to sell them a product. You can find yourself complaining about “kids these days,” or you scratch your head at the music you hear blasting the earbuds of the young person in front of you in line at Starbucks.

Millennials are the generation born in the 80s or 90s, or anyone between the ages of 13 to 32 years old. Millennials are younger than Generation Xers, which were born between 1965 and 1980.  This generation is also called “Echo Boomers,” as they’re typically children of Baby Boomers.

According to ComScore, Millennials’ defining characteristics are comfort with new technology and cultural diversity, being accustomed to on-demand access to entertainment, continual stimulation and extreme multitasking. It’s important to note that most Millennials have grown up with computers in the home and in the classroom, not knowing life without a cell phone.

Not surprisingly, the research found that Millennials are less susceptible to television advertising.

Millennials have also been found to have higher inclination than other generations to actually retain impressions from TV advertising. So it seems its hard to impress Gen Y-ers, but once they are impressed, they’re loyal.

Overall they show themselves to be generally less interested and more difficult to connect with. Millennials also harder to impress, convince and entertain. Research shows that digital advertising performs better with Millennials than TV. They’re more price-conscious because they are less accustomed to disposable income.

There  some encouraging results…

In the above figure, we can see that while the somewhat reduced attention span of Millennials makes for decreased immediate information recall, they have a higher delayed recall than other demographics.

Like other age demographics, Millennials were found to be affected by creativity in advertising. They’re also engaged in content they have decided they’re interested in, both in television and digital mediums. “Engagement” is an important aspect in advertising!

So for advertisers set with the task of actually manufacturing this “engagement,” go creative. If you happen to tap into something that catches Millennials’ attention, you’re likely to have very loyal customers.
🙂

Adapted by: John Zeus, Source: comScore, Image Credit: comScore