• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, November 5, 2023

Magna Media Trials and Samsung Ads on Friday released a study exploring connected television (CTV) viewing habits of Gen Z and Millennials. The data and the behavior suggest that search may have a connection with next-generation campaigns.

The study -- Capturing the Attention of our Youngest Generations, The Digital Advertisers’ Guide to Reaching Gen Z + Millennials on Connected TV -- found that ads viewed on CTV were perceived as being of better quality and more relevant than those airing on broadcast and cable.

For example, 60% of Gen Z and 56% of Millennials agreed that CTV featured better-quality ads than cable and satellite and 67% of Millennials and 62% of Gen Z believe they are more relevant.

Campaigns that integrate search with CTV have become more common as well as increasingly affordable for marketers looking to cut budgets.

Media planners now consider Amazon, Captify, Google, YouTube, Microsoft, among others, as more brands challenge spend habits to reach younger generations.

Using six months of data, the Magna and Samsung study surveyed 2,717 participants who installed TV visual-attention technology in their households to capture automatic content recognition (ACR), resulting in 73,531 ads analyzed for viewability and visual attention.

Researchers also recruited 1,022 Gen Z and Millennial CTV users to keep a media consumption log.

The analysis explored the highest attention to ads by time of day on CTV, average attention spans by content type, and the reactions to repeating ads. 

The TV viewing experience continues to change.

The study found Gen Z spends the most time looking at ads on CTV during late-night -- with an average of 9.63 seconds per spot -- while Millennials focus in during traditional prime-time and spend an average of 9.8 seconds per spot.

Daytime and late night are Gen Z prime times. The data revealed that viewability rates reached 62% -- the highest during late-night and daytime. This time period captured a 57% viewability rate and 55% ad-receptivity rate.

Millennials’ viewability rate is highest at 59%, during traditional prime-time hours. 

Other data found that Gen Z has a greater tolerance for advertising long-form content of an hour or more at 46% receptivity, compared with shorter spurts of less than an hour, at 38%. In turn, 52% of the cohort was more open to ads during movies, and less so to TV shows at 44%.

It's interesting to note that Millennials are more attentive to ads during sessions of less than one hour at 62%. They were most open to ads aired during DIY programming at 61%.

No one likes to see the same ad run multiple times, back-to-back. Repeating the same ad in tight time frames taxed visual attention rates. Gen Z at 43% and Millennials at 28% peaked in attention when the same ad should air three or more hours apart.