Commentary

Did 1 in 5 Millennials Just Ditch Linear TV Ads?

Working on the nationals was always introduced to me as trying to give people a "marmalade dropper" every morning, meaning that a story needed to be so strong that people drop their spread of choice as they read the paper.

Well, it might be fair to say that Campaign has just given television executives a spot of dry cleaning to do. It could just be my reading of the figures, but it looks like millennials' much-hyped switch away from linear television is beginning to have a real commercial impact.

According to the latest figures, the number of viewers between 16 to 34 years of age watching linear television ads on Sky channels and Channel 4 dropped by nearly a quarter in the first two months of this year compared to last. It's one of those figures you might have to read again to take in. I know I had to read it a couple of times -- it just seems such a sudden drop.

On average, the market was down 21%. My reading of the statistic is that television's ability to reach millennials has declined by around a fifth in just a year.

What's more, the channels that are hit most are a surprise. BT Sports and E4 are down by 25%. You would have thought sports and E4's young-leaning comedies would be the least affected, but to the contrary, they are losing millennial ad viewers at a higher proportion than other channels. You could say the same for Sky and Channel 4.

Flicking through multiple channels of largely hit American shows on Sky's channels and Channel 4's liberal stance and smart documentaries alongside hit comedy shows would be popular among millennials. It would appear not, or at least not so much.

The surprise, then, is that ITV is the channel least affected by fewer millennials tuning in to advertising.

Its share went down just 7%, around a third of the industry's average decline. I have no hard data to base this on -- just a gut feeling about who would be attracted to different channels' offerings -- but I think many people would agree that one would expect ITV, with its soaps and game shows, to suffer more than Channel 4 by millennials moving away from linear television watching. Just a hunch.

It is worth pointing out that research from the tv industry organisation, Thinkbox, has pointed out that millennial tv audiences haven't so much declined as evolved to non-linear, box set viewing. So it could be argued that the audience is still there -- it's just that millennials are doing what they always do, watching tv on their own devices and on their own terms.

The question arises, however: how many are choosing to do this on ad-free Netflix or Amazon Prime, rather than the conventional, aforementioned television channels?

So it's arguable that the notion of watching entertainment on the tv (or digital device) hasn't changed but the experience has. Millennials are leading this switch away from the linear ad break to box-set binge sessions, and the implications for reaching the demographic live are now being laid out for all to see. 

1 comment about "Did 1 in 5 Millennials Just Ditch Linear TV Ads?".
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  1. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, March 12, 2019 at 7:09 p.m.

    Sean, if your information is correct all it means is that the average Millennial has simply reduced his/her frequency of exposure to the program content involved----not that they have "ditched ads". Assuming that your Millennials are like those in The States---namely very light viewers to begin with----I suspect that advertisers will, somehow, survive as this consumer segment will see fewer commercials for all brands and, in a competitive marketplace, this will have little impact on any given brand's ad campaign---its reduction in frequency will be matched by similar reductions in competing brands' frequencies. Result: nothing changes.

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