Commentary

One-Quarter of Teens Make Online Videos, but Should Your Brand Market to Them?

It may be tempting for brands to look at Pew’s recent figures on teens and online video use and make frenzied moves to target teens via video sites. After all, the researcher reported just last week that one-quarter of teens 12 to 17 upload video to the Web, and 13% of teens live stream videos for others to watch, in a study of about 800 teens conducted last year.

Does this mean brands marketing to teens should rush out and slap ads on video-sharing sites? Maybe. But maybe not. These numbers simply underscore what virtually anyone with a teen, a computer and a cell phone already knows — teens know how to use technology. They know how to hit record on their phones or their computers. They know how to make YouTube accounts. And they know how to email or chat with their friends to send them the videos they make.

These figures from Pew are interesting, but they should be viewed by marketers and agencies as part of a broader set of data. Let’s not forget that teens don’t even watch as much online video as their college age or twenty-something counterparts. In its most recently quarterly cross-platform report, Nielsen found that teens 12 to 17 watch about four hours of video online each month. That compares to about eight hours per month for adults 18 to 24 and 6.5 hours for adults 25 to 34.

The Pew figures then say more about a teenage desire to have a voice, to make something, and to be part of a community with their friends. Those are the traits that marketers should be considering when analyzing the data. Because any smart marketer already knows that teens are online chatting and that many of them are making videos. It’s the why behind the creation that matters. Teens aren’t just going to respond to an ad on a video site because they upload video to that site. They’re more likely to respond to ads with brand values that align with theirs — creation, community, sharing.

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