A new report from Strike Social looked at YouTube campaigns across 25 different industries for the last year, and found some interesting things. First, and least surprising, is that marketers are using YouTube to heavily target the millennial and generation X demographic. Given the amount of time these people spend online, this seems to make sense.
Baby Boomers, on the other hand, aren’t being targeted nearly as much. Again, on the surface, this may make sense. When digging into the report, however, you’ll see that baby boomers actually have view rates that are 10% higher than millennial’s (31.2% and 28.3% respectively). Gen Xers also get more attention, and their view rate is 28.5%, still significantly lower than the Baby Boomers.
Jason Nesbitt, the VP of Media & Agency Operations at Strike Social, said, “We commonly see that advertisers choose to allocate their spend based on preconceived notions of different groups rather than listening to the data. This data proves that following those stereotypes often has the opposite effect on campaign engagement rates. Baby Boomers make up nearly a quarter of YouTube visitors. By ignoring this group, advertisers are missing out on a significant audience that is both highly engaged and highly valuable.”
Using data to make decisions as a marketer is one of the most important things we can do, and also one of the most neglected. Many marketers mistakenly think that they can get away with just using their intuition because they are good at making sales and influencing people. While that skill is important, it will only be amplified by focusing efforts where they can have the greatest effect.
