Children, aged between two and 12 years old, have much better advertising recall on YouTube when compared with linear television, a US study has revealed.
Precise TV, a child-safe contextual advertising platform headquartered in New York and Giraffe Insights, a youth and family research agency, surveyed 2,000 families to discover that 70% of kids recall ads on YouTube versus 35% who recall ads on broadcast TV.
That means that children are not only choosing to watch skippable ad formats on the Google-owned platform, they also value them as part of their viewing experience.
The study further cites a direct correlation between this heightened YouTube ad recall and purchasing decisions.
When children were subsequently asked to recall where they saw advertised items that they had then asked their parents to buy for them, YouTube was the overwhelming response (34%), followed by broadcast TV (15%) and in-store (9%).
“We’ve known for years that kids are watching YouTube above all other online video platforms but with this study, we can now link those viewing habits to purchasing decisions,” Holly Paxman Gibb, VP of kids media program sales at Precise TV said. “By plugging this data into a contextual targeting platform, it allows brands to ensure they’re reaching a convertible audience before even launching a campaign.”
The findings may explain why YouTube is now the biggest source of supply in US connected TV advertising, with approximately 40% of ad impressions on YouTube now occurring via smart TVs, up from 12% just two years ago, according to the report.
Giraffe Insights managing director, Maxine Fox stated that 35% of the children surveyed only access content via YouTube, online sites, social media, gaming and video on demand platforms.
She said: “That means, if brands and advertisers are not focusing on a digital-first strategy, they’re missing out on at least a third of all child audiences from the outset.”
