Same Same but Different: Yahoo7 reveals surprising truth of Millennial marketing

Yahoo7 has re-written the rules on marketing to Millennials, revealing many of their digital habits are very similar to Generation X and Baby Boomers. In a new report drawing from a range of studies, data and proprietary Yahoo7 research, the Australian innovator showcased seven key themes in which the 18 - 34 year old generation was more similar than different in their use and engagement with digital media.

Peter Hammer, Head of Insights and Analytics at Yahoo7, urges marketers to re-consider everything they'd been told about targeting Millennials.

"The data clearly demonstrates Australian marketers shouldn't be completely re-inventing their strategy for Millennials, as they've so often been told. Millennials are not the alien species they've been painted as - in fact, by leveraging broad data for all age groups, we have seen many similar behaviors in digital habits for generations older than them," he stated.

"When it comes to reaching Millennials, we encourage advertisers to use a bit more mobile, social and online video in line with increased usage, but this doesn't mean you should completely abandon desktop devices or traditional channels such as TV. In terms of advertising impact, we saw similar

levels of engagement for Millennials and Gen X, meaning that marketers should be more focussed on developing good creative that works for all generations," Hammer added.

When commenting on the role of data in marketing to Millennials, Hammer says relevance is key.

"Our data shows that there's a greater uplift in ad effectiveness when we tested creative with category buyers. And so rather than targeting based on age, there's more to be gained by reaching relevant category buyers through the increasingly sophisticated data tools now available to marketers."

The report addressed seven key research areas:

1. Digital Daily Habits

The report demonstrated Millennials have roughly the same average number of the Top 10 digital daily habits (3.1) when compared to Generation X (2.8) and Baby Boomers (2.6). While Millennials have slightly lower use of email and news formats, there was increased daily use of social media.I

2. Social Media

When comparing social media users, Millennials spent a very similar amount of time on major social media channels across the entire month as compared to other generations, however, Millennials used it slightly more across the day.II (See Fig.1)

3. Mobile

While Millennials spent a larger share of online time using their smartphone (65%) compared to Generation X (44%) and Baby Boomers (31%)III, other research suggests that Desktop still reigns supreme for email, search and news consumption.IV

4. Brand Reach

While it may seem unsurprising that bigger brands reach more Millennials, Nielsen DRM data demonstrates a surprising dominance of key digital publishers, over Millennial giants like Snapchat and Spotify. In Australia, Yahoo7 reached more than double the number of Millennials as Spotify, and 1.2 million more Millennials than Snapchat in the last six months (Jun - Nov 2016) according to the currency data.V (See Fig.2)

5. Video

Contrary to popular rhetoric, Millennials only watch slightly less TV (78%), compared to Generation X (87%) and Baby Boomers (94%) on a typical day based on self-reported data. Furthermore, advertisers can still reach Millennials through video marketing, with 99 per cent of Millennials consuming any video content being exposed to ad-supported platforms.VI

6. motional Reaction to Creative

Computer vision and machine learning techniques revealed Millennials had similar engagement to 'best' and 'worst' creative, when compared to other generations. Millennials also exhibited very similar emotional reactions to creative, never straying more than two points further from any other generation on the Average Emotional Engagement Score across all creative that was tested.VII (See Fig.3)

7. Effectiveness of Advertising

The data demonstrates almost no difference in ad effectiveness between Millennials and Generation X, when measuring brand recall, likeability and purchase consideration. Marketers should instead target audiences in terms of category buyers, with Ad Effectiveness increasing recall (+29%),

likeability (+132%) and purchase consideration (+162%) compared to non-buyers.VIII

For more information on the report, please contact your Yahoo7 account manager or
insightsseries@yahoo-inc.com.