In a media world that has historically (and misguidedly) placed its valuation on the younger age demographic, it is refreshing to see a new effort to correct for that inaccuracy by showing the value of all consumers, no matter their age. A+E has embarked on an ambitious study on Total Audience 18+ that demonstrates the power of consumer spend across all age groups, particularly older adults.
To craft such an important analysis, Marcela Tabares, Senior Vice President, Research & Strategic Insights, A+E Networks, sought data and trends from many sources and parsed the results in a way that compared behaviors across a range of ages. “We didn’t set out to do one specific study. There were a couple of different components,” she explained. “One aspect of it is that we designed it across mutually exclusive demographics like 18-44, 45-54 and 55+. The reason we did this is because we really never dug into the data and analytics to understand how the different demographic cohorts perform across the funnel.”
Total Audience Methodology
“We looked at top level awareness and receptivity down to understanding their economic power and how they’re spending across all of the consumer verticals, ad receptivity and down to the conversion. How are they actually responding to advertising, are there some differences there, what is the real magnitude and opportunity within these different age cohorts. We really wanted to understand it,” Tabares noted, “to maximize the potential of our audiences and optimizer the relationship we have with our partners.” To that end, Tabares and her team, “Applied an integrative, multimodal research strategy to quantify how key demo cohorts within Adults 18+ behave in the marketing landscape.”
Why Total Audience?
We know that the U.S. population is aging. Older adults are the fastest growing group in the last decade and projected to be in the next decade. “Ignore this demographic group at your own peril. You need to stop being so myopic in thinking about your marketing strategy and set aside your fascination with youth culture,” Tabares warned.
To many who have grappled with how to demonstrate the value of reaching older adults to advertisers, the study revealed some fascinating surprises in addition to some fairly logical insights. Using A+E’s Precision and Performance platform for advanced targeting and data driven linear analyses as well as an attribution backend, David Ernst, Vice President, Advanced Television and Digital Analytics, noticed that, “a large portion of the people that were outside of the buying demographics tended to contribute an awful lot of the performance – as much as 50% and even more.” These older prospects, Tabares explained, were being left out of the buying equation, “because they were being narrowed down into specific demographic groups.”
Total Audience Takeaways
The results of the Total Audience study underscore the value of the return on investment when you expand the age target to include all adults. There were quite a few surprising results. For example, ad receptivity was higher among older adults than among younger ones. “Really? Their recall and attention and greater message memorability and likeability?” Tabares asked rhetorically. Notably, she added, these behaviors and responses increase with each examined age cohort and ranges of consumer categories.
Tara Lantieri, Senior Director, Primary Research, Ad Sales Strategic Insights, A+E Networks delved deeply into this subject by researching a year’s worth of data that included 20,000 different TV ads from over 1600 advertisers and more than 50 categories. “What we saw was that brand memorability actually grows as viewers age. It’s twice as high for adults 55+ versus 18-34 year olds. When we look at message memorability, we see the exact same pattern where it is twice as high. Likeability follows that same, step-wise pattern where it grows by age. It’s about 71% higher overall than it is for younger adults. And that pattern is consistent across categories – 47 out of 58 examined,” she revealed.
With advertising creative, Lantieri found that multi-generational ads did particularly well among adults across the age spectrum. In some cases these ads performed twice as high in memorability and likeability metrics among older adults because they were viewed as respectful and realistic and non-stereotypical. In addition, ensemble cast ads also did especially well, “when the ensemble cast specifically included and spoke to people who are older in a realistic and nuanced way,” she said.
Aliza Wechsler, Director, Advanced Advertising and Attribution Analytics, A+E Networks, examined actual campaigns across several categories to ascertain the impact on conversion when advertisers crafted messaging that was more inclusive across age. With CPG for example, Wechsler found that 55+ represents 53% of the spend - $200 million more than the other two demo breaks combined. Auto showed similar results. “This shows the huge spending power of 55+. When you add their scale, it magnifies their potential. And they are not even being spoken to correctly. Imagine how much more of their dollars you can get if you spoke to them correctly,” she noted.
Conversion rates were also impressive. “Strategically targeting across all demos, lifts the conversion rates up unilaterally across all of the demographics. Purchase rates in our network group were 11% higher when you targeted those particular behaviors than those who fell outside of the (demo) target,” she found.
What About Advertisers?
“Adults 55+ are driving economic growth,” Lantieri stated, “For every dollar spent in the economy, Adults 55+ account for 41 cents and they spent $3.4 trillion last year alone,” with their spending increasing and currently representing 41% of spend. This compares with 18% of spend from 18-34s. If you are ignoring older adults, “You are leaving a lot of money on the table.” One would think that targeting older adults in a way that resonates with them would be a no-brainer.
But the old canard that advertisers get 55+ viewers anyway persists. “What does it mean to, ‘get them’? This is not a monolithic demographic. This is a very diverse demo with diverse interests, appetites, behaviors. They (advertisers) are not optimizing them as a consumer prospect, mindset, interest, behavior. You are just getting them demographically,” Tabares explained with Ernst adding, “You might be getting an impression but are you really communicating with them? Messages that resonate with people are going to motivate them to action.”
Changing advertiser minds when faced with entrenched beliefs is no mean feat but Peter Olsen, Executive Vice President, Ad Sales, A+E Networks, sees opportunity. “Total audience buying is starting to gain traction with the agencies. They seem to come around quicker as they see market realities and there’s no way to control CPM inflation without it,” he shared.
Have advertising partners changed their target because of the results? “This research study is just one of the building blocks of selling Total Audience, it rolls up into a larger conversation with many different tentacles,” Olsen explained and added, ”The right combination of education and our creative solutions has led to a few instances where our partners have gone back to reevaluate their target. We now have a few attention guarantee deals in the works with clients across a variety of categories.”
Next Steps
Tabares is hopeful that, “although age is still left out of the conversation,” and older audiences, “are not being spoken to correctly,” there is a real opportunity here to change the dynamic. “If we see that ad receptivity looks like this, that they have the spending power across the majority of categories and that they are responding to advertising with sales, what would happen if you actually talked to them in a more meaningful, relevant way?” she asked.
Next steps in this process will include a major ethnographic and psychological insights study that more fully dimensionalize and “get into the layers of what representation means,” to this audience. “Now is a very different time to examine values, beliefs, aspirations, attitudes, mindsets and engagement in brands and how we can tell their stories,” she concluded.
This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com
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