From a Jan’ 17 trade edition: My comments italicized.
MILLENNIALS DOMINATE ‘CORDLESS’ HOMES
If something has to be put in parentheses it has to be further defined, right? So just say how many cordless homes there are in comparison to the whole.
GENERATION DEVOTED TO STREAMING VIDEO
Is that what Millennials really want to be known as; The Generation Devoted to Streaming video!? Hey – stop treating us like chips at the bargaining table.
When it comes to TV and video content, Millennials refuse to be tied down—with cable cords, telephone wires, or any other conventional delivery “pipe.”
What’s a telephone wire? You mean those things hanging off of utility poles? Cable cords for the most part are a tangled mess tucked away behind an entertainment center. They’ve never been a hindrance to my physical mobility. I’m sure Millennials refuse to be a lot of things. But it’s safe to say no one likes to be tied down by anything.
According to GfK MRI’s Survey of the American Consumer, Millennials (ages 18-34) account for 43% of the “cordless” population—those who have never had cable, satellite or fiber optic TV service and those who once had it but have “cut the cord.”
More parenthesis. Partially defined. How many are in this cordless population? I wonder if this subset includes those who live with their parents and therefore by default use their parents service and therefore this has nothing to do with anything.
That is by far the largest generational subsection of the cord-free group.
“Cord-Free”! Finally … liberated !!
Almost one-third (30%) of all U.S. Millennials are cordless, compared to just 16% of Boomers.
fyi – Americans over 50 are responsible for over ½ of ALL consumer spending.
While they don’t have a traditional pay-TV subscription, those untethered Millennials are still avid viewers of television and other video.
Prior to being untethered they were tied up in the basement.
The GfK MRI survey says they turn to streaming for TV and video, spending two-thirds (65%) of their viewing time streaming via a TV set or other device.
So are they streaming TV or are they streaming things on their TV?
That is almost double the proportion for cordless Boomers (36%), who instead spend the majority (56%) of their viewing time watching live TV via an over-the-air antenna.
Cordless Boomer…. sounds like something from The Sharper Image. Too bad only 10% of marketing activity directed at them, because we know where they are.
GfK MRI also found that, compared to all Millennials, those who have cut the cord (they once had pay-TV, but cancelled) are more likely to use some key streaming entities. Their favorites for streaming video are fairly standard—YouTube, Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime; but they also over-index for smaller entities like Crunchy Roll, Twitch and the Adult Swim App.
I wonder how they are getting their internet service if they cut the cord? That’s an awfully expensive data plan. What, did they just survey the upper West Side and Beverly Hills?
Cordless Millennials place a premium on being independent, preferring to watch TV or video whenever and wherever they want.
The true mark of independence !
They don’t differentiate on the basis of where content was developed and are most likely to define “TV” as anything they can watch on any device—a TV, laptop, smartphone or tablet.
That’s a great observation. But if I’m a marketer, why do I care if the consumer cares where the content was developed. As far as the definition of TV, how many times are we going to repeat that it’s changed.. for everyone. What remains more or less the same is the TV business and its leading edge in ad effectiveness.
And when they sit down to watch TV or video, they are most likely to go to a specific show on a streaming service—with one-third (34%) of cord-free Millennials citing this as their default viewing strategy. Obviously, having one of those default viewing shows is a strong selling point for a content provider, regardless of how it is delivered.
Consumers formulate viewing strategies?!
As far as advertising is concerned, GfK MRI’s study shows that Millennials are hard to reach because they are 44 times more likely to be cord-free than the average U.S. consumer.
What does that say about the efficacy of all the UNconventional delivery “pipes”?
Cordless Millennials also do not use much media except for Internet—they are heavy streamers, heavy binge viewers, but light on traditional linear TV watching.
Internet streaming includes radio, no? Publishers use the internet too last I saw. So, in summary, they don’t use much media … except TV, Radio, Print and the internet.
The findings from GfK MRI’s Cord Evolution research are based on around 25,000 respondents in GfK MRI’s Survey of the American Consumer.
Rest assured all the figures listed above would go as the composition of the 25,000 goes.
