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Senior media planners do not believe that younger and older demographics are easier to reach on the same platform despite a new report that suggests their media habits are starting to converge.

The IPA TouchPoints Making Sense report to analyses the reach of different media channels and how much time different demographics are spending on them. It does not specify that different generations are converging on the same media and social media platforms.

The report found a “increases in convergence” between the media consumption habits of 16-34s and people aged 55 and over following years significant declines in consumption crossover.

It said this is being driven by 16-34s appearing to have “reached peak digital penetration” and an increasing uptake of digital media from those aged 55 and over (see chart below).

By channel, the report found online video has grown the most, taking up a greater share of time than broadcast TV. For all adults, in 2021 54% of time is spent on digital channels versus 46% on non-digital, the inverse of media consumption habits in 2015. 

Another finding is that with the exception of out of home, no single curated channel can reach more than 90% of all adults per week.

The IPA's head of marketing and data innovation Simon Frazier said: "although we should certainly feel encouraged by the rising correlation figures we have seen, it’s still really important to bear in mind that increases in similarities in reach and time spent figures only tell part of the story but alone, they don’t give any indication of how the media is used by the different audiences.

"[It's important to understand the] nuanced understanding of media usage by target, the context of usage and arguably most importantly comprehension of how attention and mental availability vary by media at the moment of engagement.”

Simon Taylor is the managing partner at UM and heads up its Just Eat, Amex and Purplebricks account teams.

He told ±±¾©Èü³µpk10 one of the more interesting findings of the report is that TV’s share of total commercial media time viewed slipped from 40% during recent lockdowns to just 33% in 2021 post-lockdown.

“The older generation, who were traditionally easy pickings for media planners, are now also consuming AV content in a more nuanced way. It would be lazy to make broad assumptions and we would always ideally plan across platforms to reach all demographics – but the challenge of effectively reaching audiences continues to be complex,” he said.

Taylor maintains that targeting younger audiences of which an increasingly large number are cord-cutters, is complicated. 

“Millennials especially only really tune into the occasional must-see programme on linear,” he said. “It’s no accident that Just Eat sponsor Love Island. To target 18-34s with an AV ad we need to blend linear, BVOD, YouTube and social to have any chance of delivering a meaningful reach and frequency. It increasingly looks like we are going to do likewise with older audiences…and we need to challenge demographic stereotypes.”

Starcom chief strategy officer Dan Plant believes that lockdown artificially skewed media consumption habits and the post lockdown results are more of a correction, although certain longer trends, such as the flight to digital media and fragmentation, remain true.

“There is some indication that older audiences are now catching up on some media behaviours previously exhibited by younger audiences, but that doesn’t really mean there is any better overlap than there was before in terms of the real media exposure,” he said.

“Older audiences might be using social media platforms on their smartphones, but those platforms are unique experiences for everyone who uses them, so the media consumption never really correlates even if the broad description of it sounds similar.”

Plant said as an industry it is time to have a debate about how important are device and platform media consumption trends compared with understanding what people are actually watching, reading or listening to.

An example is that there are now “tens of smaller social media spaces” that younger audiences are experimenting with, whereas in the earlier days of social media the market was dominated by Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

For the first time in Facebook’s history, it has reported a decline in user numbers, albeit a marginal one. Part of the reason for this is the emergence of a relatively new player in TikTok.

Plant believes there are two genuine concerns for planners in this increasingly fragmented media landscape.

The first is that there are fewer “common media moments” that attract large cross-generation audiences outside of OOH, cinema and tentpole TV programmes or sport.

“If there are no common media moments, then how can one person know what the perception of his neighbour is about a brand?” Plant said. “Big TV brands such as ITV and channel 4, Sky Sports and now Eurosport with the Olympics, continue to create compelling cultural cornerstones that people want to engage with in the moment. These moments are obviously less common than they used to be, but they are all the more valuable for that.”

The second concern for Plant is what he describes as a “lack of mental capacity” in the advertising industry to create ads that are tailored to new social media formats.

“Advertisers are trying to be in their spaces but they're struggling. TikTok is a good example,” he said. “We’ve talked about creative being ‘fit for platform’ for a long time, but so far that has not led to much creative that stands up to the best that we used to see on television, print or OOH. As there are more and more different platforms that need to have copy repurposed, the creative work itself is becoming safer in order that it is easy to adapt.”

The IPA’s report may indicate that media consumption habits by device are converging between generations, but how advertisers can effectively reach different demographics is becoming increasingly nuanced and complex.