Report: millennials are more likely to share an ad (but also to mute it)

Advertising to millennials can be challenging, especially when there’s a lack of understanding towards their needs. Here’s what you need to consider before targeting them.

The term “millennial” has become very popular during the past years and it refers to people aged 18-34, or else, the most highly sought demographic for advertisers.

Although the word has been overused and may be misleading when referring to such a broad age group, we can still get an idea of their digital habits and how they react towards advertising.

In general, millennials have grown along with the internet, which means that they are digital savvy and they may react differently to an ad they come across.

In fact, their reactions may be unpredictable, as they have a love-hate relationship with advertising.

What millennials love

According to Unruly, millennials are 112% more likely to share video ads comparing to any other demographic, but this doesn’t make them an easily convinced target group.

The likelihood of sharing an ad depends on whether they like it enough to proceed to this action. Relevance is very important for the specific audience, with 23% of them saying that they are more likely to enjoy ads they find relevant.

Except for the relevance, an appealing ad for millennials should be creative, unique, with a strong emotional trigger that will grab their attention.

Thus, millennials may be demanding, but they are not ruling out the case of actually enjoying a video ad, which they ultimately “reward” it by further sharing it.

Image source: Pixabay

What millennials hate

There is an interesting contradiction here, as Unruly noted that millennials are the demographics most likely to install ad blockers, or put video ads on mute.

More specifically, 93% of them would consider installing an ad blocker software in the future, a percentage that indicates how they feel about (Read more...) ads.

Although the stats above named millennials as the audience that is more willing to share an ad, 84% of them answered that they would mute a brand’s video ads, but at least they can justify their reasons.

The main reasons that they turn to ad blockers is the presence of too many ads, while they also mentioned that they hate coming across the same ads over and over again, or even having ads following them around the web.

In numbers:

• 59% of them think there are too many ads
• 49.4% of them are tired of being shown the same ad
• 43.1% of them hate ads that follow them around the internet

Thus, advertisers should consider new ways to grab their attention by fixing the quantity, the relevance and the privacy of their ads.

What millennials want

Appealing advertising for millennials should be all about:

• authenticity
• engagement
• relevance
• creativity
• inspiration
• emotional response

74% of millennials said that they lose trust in a brand if they feel that their ad is fake, which proves their high value over authenticity.

What’s more, the power of the emotional trigger is significant to them, with happiness and inspiration being the most effective emotions when targeting them.

Image source: Giphy

What marketers need to understand is that millennials hate the imposed advertising and 63% of them demand more control over their video advertising experiences, reminding the industry their differences with the previous generations.

Not all millennials are the same

Let’s not forget that the overuse of the word “millennials” may lead to generalisations when analysing your target audience, which means that you always need to keep in mind that not all millennials are the same.

Although the stats above can be a great start when creating ads for this specific audience, you still need to experiment with new ideas, until you get a better understanding of the context, the response and the effectiveness of your advertising for the particular generation.

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