Young Adults Turning from TV

While the story related to this research (login required) falls into the ‘yeah … duh’ category of what’s new in the world of media, I still found the stats and observations worthy of a quick review, if only because they reinforced my firmly entrenched biases.

For starters, it clearly reinforces the notion that if you’re going to try to reach someone less than 50 years old, you’d better be online in a big way.  The traditional throwing of bones in the form of 5 or 10% just won’t cut it.  You’ve got to be investing in a fairly significant way and you’ve got to be ready to spend money on non-mainstream properties in order to reach the widest possible audience.

Search is a good start, but there’s only so far you can go with search before you’re paying expensive CPC rates for ‘cake’ when you’re selling cars.

I use average CPC rates as a bit of a proxy for when to move on to broader coverage, provided by ad networks (the ‘splatter’ approach, in my web jargon).  If you’re paying $1.00 CPC with search, odds are you can get a much broader audience for about the same price with an ad network.  Now, is the quality better?  Only a good review of analytics and post-click results will tell you that.

Regardless, I hope this is important advice, particularly for those of you who get into bidding wars with PPC campaigns.  Paying anything above $2.50-$3.00 seems ludicrous to me, but I’d love to see some generic results that prove otherwise.  To date, I’ve yet to see justification for paying this much for PPC (search) campaigns.

Getting back to the point:  In an age of accountability and measurement, the trend is our friend.  TV sucks.  New media rocks.

PS:  For those who don’t have an Examiner account, here’s part of the original story:

Study: Young Adults Turn Away From TV

Posted October 20th, 2008 by Wendy Davis
Only 58% of adults younger than 30 say they watch TV almost every day, while 23% of say they watch television only a few times a week. That’s according to new research by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Among older adults, the numbers are higher. Seventy-two percent of people age 30-49 watch TV almost every day, as do 80% of those 50-64 and 89% of those 65 and older.

These stats make it clear that, while advertisers aiming to reach people older than 29 can still count on television, those trying to reach consumers in the 18-29 bracket need to consider placing ads elsewhere. Which is one reason why the faltering economy might not be completely devastating for online media. Yes, a struggling Yahoo is expected to lay off 1,500 workers this week. Yes, ad networks like AdBrite are shedding staff while others, like JellyCloud, are closing altogether. And, yes, some start-ups are in cost-cutting mode.

But, ultimately, consumers continue to spend time online, and advertisers have no realistic choice other than to follow them.

Independent of the Pew study, The Wall Street Journal recently wrote about the growing number of adults who have stopped paying for cable TV because they can watch any programs they want online. Presidential debates can now be streamed live, shows on cable channels like MTV are available for free streaming, and the best moments from “Saturday Night Live” can be viewed on demand at Hulu.com and NBC.com.

If people had already started canceling their cable subscriptions before the recent economic events, it’s easy to imagine that more will do so in a recession. And that means that Internet video, which already commands some of the highest CPMs out there, will grow in popularity. Current predictions are that the market could reach $1 billion by 2010, but that could turn out to be an underestimate if more people than expected stop watching TV.

Additionally, as people spend more time online, search advertising also is likely to continue to grow. Many Web users now view search engines, and not portals, as the gateway to the Web; when those people go online, they start at Google, Yahoo or another company’s search engine. Just last week, Google reported that second quarter profit grew 26%, showing that paid search is holding up very well, even as the rest of the economy teeters.