NewsLine Column: Tapping Into The Youth Market
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With media fragmentation making it increasingly difficult for advertisers to reach elusive youth audiences, Peter Miles, chief executive of SUBtv, explains why new media channels are rapidly emerging as the most effective way to tap into the lucrative 16 to 24 market.
The recent BARB report that ITV’s coverage of 16-24 year-olds has dropped by 17.2 per cent in the last year should come as no great surprise. Young people have plenty of more exciting things to do than sit at home in front of the TV.
The interesting point about these findings is not the implications for ITV, which after all still provides the biggest mass audiences for those advertisers who need to reach them in the traditional fashion, but the fact that it further reinforces an underlying trend towards media that are close to their specific audiences, both physically and emotionally.
The youth market is a perfect example. By their very nature young people are very mobile but they still want to be in touch with what’s going on 24 hours a day, as with instant messaging on the PC or text messages through their mobile phones.
Hence the need to take media to where the youth are, plus the increase in ‘media’ content on mobile devices and the growth of out-of-home media in leisure venues such as bars, shopping malls and student campuses.
The youth market is also in the forefront of developments towards what I would call ‘consensual’ media, where the audience can select content and interact with it in a meaningful way. Here they can start to feel emotionally linked to, and part of, the media rather than the old-fashioned, simple, passive consumer of it.
The way the internet allows people to select their content and interact directly with the media is a good illustration of this. But other media can also construct an environment that provides similar choice and interactive flexibility for their audiences.
At SUBtv, we reach 1.2 million students a week through giant plasma screens in student unions across the country. They can access broadcast news, sport and other channels but they also decide locally on the programming they want. We have a big programming and commissioning role, but we ask our customers what they want and do our best to supply it. This includes coverage of university sports, music events and other local input.
In this way we make a positive contribution to the environment that our medium inhabits. It also helps reduce the amount of programming guesswork and enables us to deliver our audience and increase the channel’s university network. Furthermore we are starting to build sophisticated interactive systems, which will benefit the students, the advertisers and the sponsors.
The first of these is a digital matrix redemption system, which will provide electronic coupons on purchases. This works through mobile phones as well as other channels. Besides increasing consumer traffic this will also allow advertisers to track the effectiveness of their promotions and provide valuable data on the lifestyle and behaviour of our audience, which already amounts to 60 per cent of UK students and 24 per cent of all 16-24 year-olds in the UK.
Undoubtedly an increasing number of media will have to follow this route and build more powerful, interactive relationships with their audiences if they are to deliver advertisers the impact and effectiveness they require.
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