• by Marlee Rosen , April 1, 2013

Before marketing to each generation, it’s important to understand the different entertainment interests and communication messages that resonate best with each age group. Scarborough Research studied the views of heavy listeners to provide stations with insights into topics that interest them and their buying habits. Scarborough’s SVP of Digital Media Services Gary Meo touched upon this topic at the recent Arbitron Client Conference.

“The better you know your audience, the better you can provide engaging content,” said Meo. For example, 61% of Millennials are reached by popular CHR formats, while Spanish Adult Hits do well with Gen Xers. Studying online shopping behaviors shows this to be true. Sixty-two percent of Millennials agree that the Internet is a main source of entertainment, compared to 50% of Gen Xers. This supports how unicasting is being considered one-to-one online entertainment broadcasting that provides advertisers with a way to address several different audiences with a single medium.

Hulu, for example, built a multimillion-dollar ad-supported business model by offering one-to-one, customized entertainment programming that speaks to both Gen X and Y extremely well. Millennials (Generation Y) hooked on "New Girl" and "Glee" see much different ads during their Hulu programming breaks than the “MTV Generation” watching "Law & Order" and "Grey’s Anatomy." They clearly are doing something right -- as revenue for 2011 was over $420 million!

Thousands of broadcasters are seeing a significant increase in ad dollars from both Generation X and Yers who access their programs. There are technology platforms that allow online audio publishers to conduct one-to-one marketing by allowing them to insert ads directly into each individual end-user stream. This ensures that the ad specifically speaks to the individual end-user interests, geographical location and even their age!

Such online audio publishers that offer one-to-one customized real-time streaming and on-demand online audio entertainment appeal to advertisers that want to hit both generations. Virgin Radio, Yahoo Sports, and Leighton Broadcasting are online audio publishers that deploy customized, generational advertising through one common technology, “Targeted Ad Insertion.”

For example, online publisher Absolute Radio is reaching both generations with their InStream Ad Service using AdsWizz technology in order to do one-to-one marketing. Advertisers such as Volkswagen, the car marque, and Microsoft's cloud-based software Office 365 use the service and integrate ad serving across multiple platforms in multiple formats, with Web analytics and advanced targeting filters. They can also manage inventory and contracts all within one user interface.

The increasing greater adoption of a logged-in listenership provides a "full view" that includes the gender, age, demographic and active location. We have seen it with Groupon and their 115 million-plus opt-in subscribers as well as with Living Social and Yipit. Audio streaming combined with ad targeting enhances the radio experience by merging opt-in privacy data with live online streaming.  

From consumer electronics to entertainment, advertisers continue to face a difficult challenge in finding a perfect balance of marketing “one brand” to two similar -- yet very different -- audiences: Generation X and Millennials. The differences are strong enough between the two age groups that if you ask most advertisers -- especially those promoting consumer products -- they constantly struggle to create one cohesive brand that speaks to both audiences.

On the flip side, the good news at the end of the day is that ad-serving geotargeting technology is rapidly evolving to meet the needs of the advertisers’ plight in getting the most bang for their advertising dollars. It is becoming apparent that ad technology advancements will be instrumental in targeting these vast audiences.