Digital advertising may be growing very big very fast, but young Americans still love their TV shows, and the brands that back those shows, according to a new study by the Video Advertising Bureau.
In fact, those Millennial fans have what the study called a "360-degree relationship" with their favorite shows, from scheduling when they'll watch a new episode to posting about the shows and reading episode recaps to visiting the restaurant of that hot new chef from a cooking program.
Committed: Exploring Millennials' Meaningful Relationship With TV Programming, surveyed 1,000 young adults ages 18 to 34 about their durable attachment to ad-supported TV programming, and its outsized influence on their buying and socializing decisions.
“Our new ‘Committed’ report quantifies the deep connection viewers form with television programs, which translates into actions far beyond watching,” said VAB president and CEO Sean Cunningham. “This significant emotional bond between millennial viewers and television motivates purchases and generates results for marketers.”
The VAB study arrived about the same time as bullish new projections for 2018 global ad revenues from Magna Global, the big media agency. Magna's mid-year update found that advertising of all kinds now is projected to jump 6.9 percent to $207 billion worldwide.
Those 2018 numbers are plumped up by soccer's World Cup, the Winter Olympics and the U.S. mid-term elections. But even minus the cyclical bumps to the bottom line, advertising should rise 4 percent.
Digital ads will be a big beneficiary, jumping to 51.5 percent of all U.S. ad revenues this year, which will hit an all-time high of $106 billion, Magna said. TV will continue to grow as well (1 percent), especially at the local broadcast level (up 9 percent).
That's good news for brands still relying TV amid big changes in viewing habits, thanks to cord-cutting, DVRs, subscription video services such as Netflix and Amazon, and the rise of mobile. But the VAB survey suggests that for many young adults, settling in to watch their favorite TV shows remains a highlight of their week, no matter where they ended up watching it.
"Millennials have more choices than ever in a 'million-channel world,' making deft targeting a crucial skill for modern marketers," said Tim Sovay, the COO at CreatorIQ, an influencer-marketing platform. "And as the lines between digital and traditional continue to blur, digital creators increasingly see (having a presence across) television, streaming platforms, and podcasts as attainable, as do their large brand partners that enable this growth."
According to the VAB study, nearly three in four Millennials (74 percent) consider TV to be their "me time." Nearly as many (73 percent) try to watch every new episode of their favorite shows.
Some 61 percent said they regularly set aside time to watch their favorites, and more than half (56 percent) said the finale of each season left them sad about having to wait months to see their favorite's next new episode.
"Emotion drives everything we do – what shows we watch, what we buy, what we wear," said Jared Feldman, CEO and founder of Canvs, which uses artificial-intelligence tools to measure emotional responses in social-media and other outlets about TV shows. "As millennials prioritize TV viewing, it's more important than ever to analyze their Emotional Reactions to shows and dig into how this influences their outwardly expression and behavior."
Millennials even tend to think well of the brands that show up on and around their favorite programs:
- 40 percent have visited a destination they saw on TV;
- 43 percent have gone to eat at a restaurant they saw on a show;
- 43 percent have purchased a TV star's product line after seeing it saw on TV.
Those rates are all somewhat higher than the adult population as a whole. Millennials, who have been leading cord-cutters in response to pricey pay-TV packages, still are powerfully connected to their favorite shows.
"Brand advocacy, traditionally known as commercial endorsement, has thrived on every popular communication medium for decades," said Sovay. "Influencer marketing is simply the latest powerful incarnation of brand advocacy. What has changed is not the fundamental format, but rather the volume of distribution channels and the voraciousness of the niche audiences that subscribe."
The goodwill carries over online to other fan behaviors. Almost half of those surveyed said they go online to hunt down episode recaps and reviews. Perhaps that's not a surprise given the rising popularity in recent years of such "meta-shows" as The Talking Dead and basically everything Andy Cohen does on air for Bravo, and endless posts across many sites focused on what happened in big shows.
And of course, younger fans have been filling their social-media accounts with never-ending conversations about their favorite shows, stars and brands. Some 55 percent of those surveyed said they had used a phrase in conversation that they'd heard on TV. Another 45 percent share, post, or tweet video clips and content. The study even found that Millennials bonded more intensely with TV programming than with original YouTube content.
"Millennials are growing the trillions of different expressions we have every day, evolving language and culture through their emotion-driven interactions with content and each other," Feldman said. "At Canvs, we use semantic AI and machine learning systems to understand how and why people feel, and use those insights to inform content creation and business decisions."
The Video Advertising Bureau's members include a wide range of broadcast and pay-TV networks and distributors. The study was conducted online in April by Research Now. Survey respondents skewed slightly younger but otherwise aligned with the population.
