Millennials Are a Tough Bunch to Market to

Visual engagement analytics firm Sticky recently ran a study to compare how hard it is to engage baby boomers vs.  millennials with digital ads. They evaluated the digital ads on AOL Lifestyle site featured below. The results may surprise you.  

1. Baby Boomers See the Ads Up to 3x More than Millennial Do

As you can tell, there are three areas in question: The Seamless Ad, Zodiac Signs, and the AOL Lifestyle Ad. In all three areas, it was easier to engage the Baby Boomers than the Millennials.

Seamless Ad: 31% of Millennials see it; 83% of Baby Boomers see it.

Zodiac Signs: 31% of Millennials see it; 70% of Baby Boomers see it.

AOL Lifestyle Ad: 6% of Millennials see it; 83% of Baby Boomers see it.

2. Baby Boomers See the Ads Faster than Millennials

Seamless Ad: It takes Millennials 5.5 seconds to see the ad; Baby Boomers see it in 4.5 seconds.

Zodiac Signs: It takes Millennials 10.9 seconds to see the ad; Baby Boomers see it in 8 seconds.

AOL Lifestyle Ad: It takes Millennials 13.4 seconds to see the ad; Baby Boomers see it in 11.2 seconds.

3. Baby Boomers Engage with the Ads for Longer

Seamless Ad: Millennials look at the ad for 0.5 seconds; Baby Boomers look at it for 2 seconds.

Zodiac Signs: Millenials look at the ad for 0.9 seconds; Baby Boomers look at it for 1.5 seconds.

AOL Lifestyle Ad: Millennials look at the ad for 0.2 seconds; Baby Boomers look at it for 1.6 seconds.

Takeaways

Since Millennials have grown up in the digital world, they’re more familiar with it, so they’re better than Baby Boomers at filtering out what they don’t want to see (this is also the age group most likely to have ad blockers on their browsers). Therefore, marketers will need to try even harder to engage Millennials, and they’ll need to try new things like different page placements and funny, relevant content.

Instead of forced or intrusive tactics like pre-roll videos and unskippable page ads, which are often viewed as disruptive and annoying, marketers should focus more on original content creation to earn the engagement and attention of their targets. And to measure the effectiveness of ads, it’s increasingly important to learn the emotional engagement beforehand to predict in-market performance.

With new tactics and metrics, however, Millennials should become more engaged.