Attention Advertisers: If You Can’t Reach Millennials, It’s You, Not Them
Millennials are now the largest generation in the United States, which census data pegs at over 92 million. But why are they so hard for advertisers to reach? Because for this demographic, traditional advertising doesn’t work. This is no small matter, considering just one segment of this group, multicultural millennials, spend $65 billion each year, a number that is always growing, and influences nearly $1 trillion in total consumer spending.
It’s clear that traditional advertising formats — print, radio, TV and billboards — fail to speak millennials’ language. Legacy ads are one-way content delivery vehicles, meaning you can interact with them one-dimensionally, but won’t get anything in return. In order to engage with today’s consumer preferences, brands must implement an ad format that is not only digital and interactive, but also experiential, social, gamified, engaging and timely. Cue the smartphone.
When Pokemon Go first came out in Summer 2016, it was all the rage. Millions of millennial users, aged 20–30, spent thousands of hours chasing virtual creatures all over the world via an interactive smartphone video game. Nostalgia aside, Pokemon Go’s popularity showed that if you create an engaging and interactive format, millennials will stick around for sponsored content or advertising.
Snapchat is another good example. A recent trends report showed that most millennials spend an average session time of 196 seconds on Snapchat, which crushes what comScore says is the five-to-six seconds millennials will devote to traditional advertising. By leveraging interactive photo messaging, video calling, filters, bitmojis and stickers, Snapchat is clearly doing something right.
At Xperiel, we use this same concept to turn traditional advertising channels into two-way, interactive, gamified engagements. With more arenas and stadiums installing Wi-Fi ports and miles of fiber-optic cable, major sports brands like the Golden State Warriors, New York Jets, and the Sacramento Kings already use our technology to bring experiential marketing and superior digital experiences to fans that enhance brand interactions, team loyalty, revenue and fun.
We’re changing the way people can (and will) interact with a completely connected world, and our user metrics are by far the highest the industry has ever seen. Remember when we said that millennials devote five-to-six seconds on traditional advertising and 196 seconds per session on Snapchat? Those same users will spend a whopping 7,000 seconds (nearly two hours!) on Xperiel-powered apps. This kind of engagement is 17.8 times higher than Twitter and Instagram combined.
Moreover, it’s not the responsibility of millennials to adapt to the old advertising formats. The onus is on brands and advertisers to adapt to this generation, advertise and market appropriately. The easiest way to do that is to recognize that the unifying factor for millennials is the smartphone. This is a mobile generation, and ads have to work on the smartphone, no matter their level of engagement and interactivity.
Whether it’s an Android or iOS device, our smartphones have already become an extension of our bodies. These handheld supercomputers are never more than six inches away and on average are used for hours, every day. The popularity of mobile devices means advertisers can use them as a resource to directly connect with millennials — provided the approach is right. If you understand this and take advantage of it, you’ll win. If you don’t, you stand to lose far more than just their attention.
