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We recently touched on the magnitude of Baby Boomers both in terms of population as well as in buying power. So what exactly is this massive population spending their $2.4 trillion in annual disposable income on? Well, according to the National Association of Realtors, vacation homes! In fact, sales of second-home properties last year reached an estimated 1.13 million and accounted for 21 percent of the number of homes bought in the U.S., the highest market share since the Investment and Vacation Home Buyers Survey was first conducted in 2003. A variety of factors have contributed to this increase, including an attraction to low interest rates, a robust stock market and impending retirement from the daily commute. Get the full story on MediaPost>>
Information on marketing to Millennials can be found virtually anywhere these days, but what about Baby Boomers? Once a prime focus of marketers’ advertising strategies, Boomers are now being overshadowed by the newer, younger, and more technologically-savvy generations like Millennials and Gen Zers. In fact, according to Nielsen, less than five percent of advertising budgets are put toward Baby Boomers nowadays. Yes, this audience may be older, but they’re also massive in size and have significant spending power, which means you shouldn’t count the Boomers out of your media plans just yet. Born between 1946 and 1964, this generation (comprised of Americans ages 50 and older) account for nearly a quarter of the total U.S. population, with 76.4 million currently existing in the United States. That’s a lot of Boomers – and potential benefit for your brand.
But that’s not the only reason why you should put Baby Boomers at the top of your media plans. They’re also:
In fact, digital marketing firm, Immersion Active, reports that Boomers have an annual disposable income of $2.4 trillion (or 70 percent of the nation’s disposable income) and account for $230 billion in sales of consumer packaged goods like coffee, diet soda and magazines (Nielsen). Additionally, Baby Boomers are becoming increasingly tech and internet savvy. Surprisingly, younger Boomers (ages 47 to 55) spent an average of 39.3 hours online per month in 2010, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Older Boomers (ages 56 to 65) averaged only slightly less, at 36.5 hours. More significantly, over one-third of all tablet owners in the U.S. are over the age of 45, while 66 percent regularly purchase from online retailers. For marketers, this means the Baby Boomer market is very lucrative – increasing sales or gaining share with the right set of tactics.
That being said, marketing to this older and more brand loyal generation can be tricky. Getting to know and understand what drives their attitudes and behavior is the first step toward efficiently reaching and targeting them. Here is some insight to help get you started:
BOOMERS USE SOCIAL MEDIA, BUT IN A DIFFERENT WAY
Despite stereotypes, Baby Boomers aren’t living in the Stone Age when it comes to social media. Yes, the average age of a user may be young, but a large percentage of social media profiles belong to people over the age of 55 – 27 million active users to be exact! (Immersion Active). In fact, Boomers are among the fastest growing groups on social media. Younger generations prefer Instagram or Snapchat to post photos of their nights out and weekend trips, whereas Boomers are more likely to use Facebook to engage with family and friends. Other common activities Boomers partake in on social sites include following groups/organizations (55 percent), posting/watching videos (40 percent), supporting causes (26 percent), and joining groups (23 percent). Diving even deeper into the numbers, Boomers strongly prefer Facebook over Twitter: 49 percent of online Boomers have a Facebook account, while only 18 percent use Twitter. As older Boomers become less active and moveable, social media is the ideal way for them to keep in touch with family and friends. This means that developing the right social marketing strategy is crucial if you want to reach Boomers during the moments that matter to them.
OFFER REAL, RELEVANT, AND RELATABLE CONTENT
Here’s the bad news: Baby Boomers don’t trust marketers. And as this generation continues to age, their skepticism toward advertising grows. A recent study conducted by Insights in Marketing revealed that Boomer men (26 percent) and women (21 percent) are the least likely of any generation to believe what advertisers and marketers say about their products and services. But their skepticism is warranted. This generation grew up during the nascency of television, watching advertising grow from its inception to where it is today. In fact, Boomers have spent pretty much their entire lives inundated with advertisements, so they’re used to seeing marketers use tactics without strong content plans to back them up. Many Boomers have bought products in the past that didn’t live up to their own expectations or the marketing hype in terms of messaging as well as in quality. To gain Boomers’ trust, marketers must focus on offering them information that will resonate based on significance and candor, which means ads should reflect relevant, real-life situations so that consumers can relate. Communicating with Boomer consumers in a simple manner, with compelling, clear and concise content is also crucial. This will help marketers attract and retain loyal Boomers today and in the years to come.
SLOT SEARCH INTO YOUR MEDIA PLANS
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a Baby Boomer’s best friend. In fact, a study conducted by the DMN3 Institute, a digital and direct marketing agency, found that the top online activity of Boomers was utilizing search engines (96 percent). Likewise, the top online destination for Boomers is Google Search. When respondents in the DMN3 study were asked about actions taken as a result of performing online activities, search drastically outperformed social media and viewing online videos in getting Boomers to take action, including making a purchase. The top referral result of search engine use? Boomers looked for additional information online 82.4 percent of the time, with visits to a company website coming in at a close second (77.5 percent). More significantly, over half of Boomers who use social networking sites will visit a company website or continue their search on a search engine as a result of seeing something on social media. This just goes to show how interconnected and vital search and social are in successfully reaching the Baby Boomer audience.
No matter which marketing tactic you choose, providing content that meets Boomers’ needs for information in a thought-provoking, strategic, and timely manner is critical. Because the fact of the matter is, you’re not going to get the eyeballs, action, call, or purchase if your audience isn’t interested in you or what you have to offer. To learn even more about Baby Boomers, check out the infographic below.
After a brief hiatus, the digital innovations team is back to bring you some extra awesome in your day. With all of the late summer travel and impromptu vacations, it can be tough to keep up with the latest trade publications and trends. To help you out, the team has pulled together a fresh list of articles, reports, and other bits of info you might have missed, but definitely should read. Happy back-to-school, college football kick-off day, new office moves, and almost cooler weather to you all! Enjoy!
Papa Murphy’s Takes 'N’ Bakes A Digital Transformation
A deeper look at how this challenger brand is transforming its business to become more data-driven by improving customers’ digital touchpoints from the online ordering process to their POS systems. It is like they say, the sum is greater than the slice, or the pie is greater than a single topping. You know what we mean.
6 Reasons Your Business Can't Afford to Ignore Mobile Advertising
While the growth in mobile advertising is not an unusual topic to see covered in the digital trades, Forbes sheds new light about the space that you may not have perspective on. Some good points for the late adopting advertiser, who is still thinking about jumping into the social space.
Mobile to Account for More than Half of Digital Ad Spending in 2015
Check out the very latest eMarketer estimates that now peg mobile at 51.9 percent of total U.S. digital spending. It’s important to note that this includes search, SMS, classifieds, and email. Though comprehensive, this is still a huge number!
If you haven’t heard, consumers are shifting their focus from the mobile browser to mobile apps, which now capture 90 percent of the three hours and 40 minutes spent on mobile devices, according to Flurry.
Landscape and Portrait Photos Now Available on Instagram
Instagram just updated its platform and now users aren’t stuck with just a square space to work with. Unfortunately, it’s still unknown as to whether this will trickle down to Instagram’s newly opened ad formats. After Snapchat succeeded in encouraging brands to think more vertically, Facebook and Instagram seem to be weighing-in on the widescreen versus vertical screen experience for users on mobile devices.
Snapchat Boasting 4B Views a Day
In June, the average Snapchat user spent an average of 10 minutes per day consuming content on the platform. That makes them second only to Facebook in terms of time spent on a device each day, thus surpassing Instagram and Twitter in the process. The Discover and Live sections are certainly significant drivers in this shift. Snapchat has been focused on generating quality content for its users and making rapid adjustments to deliver said content, dropping three of its publishing partners and adding six more in the last month.
Let’s Get Physical: PlaceIQ Chips Away At Online/Offline Attribution
Given the growing obsession with offline mobile attribution in the past year, this article from AdExchanger shares perspective on many of the players in the mobile location space. More specifically, it looks at those that track location visit rates impacted by exposure to certain mobile ads. Will foot traffic be the new click-through for retailers?
Apple’s Ad-Blocking Is Potential Nightmare for Publishers
Apple’s future plans to block mobile ads with the release of iOS9 has introduced concerns for many advertisers. How the digital ad community and publishers plan to respond is still yet to be determined. But for now, this Wall Street Journal story provides a solid round-up of the situation as publishers seek to find solutions.
Twitter Pushes Mobile Video Ads, Promoted Tweets to Third-Party Apps
Some interesting updates to Twitter’s suite of ad offerings focus on the availability of new mobile video units that can run outside of the Twitter platform. What’s interesting is how Twitter can operate across a network of thousands of third-party apps.
Mobile Video Ads: Viewability in Eye of Beholder
As the industry slowly converges on a common set of performance standards, the question advertisers now face is how to gauge success in the absence of benchmark viewability standards.
Google Adds Buy Button For YouTube TrueView Ads
Advertisers continue to push video ads in order to drive more than just brand awareness. In this article, MediaPost touches on Google addressing those needs with a more usable version of YouTube ads.
Programmatic TV Ad Sales: It’s a Different World Than Digital Display & Video
The President of Videa, a programmatic TV sell-side platform, breaks down some frequently asked questions about the programmatic TV space.
What Standards Mean for Programmatic TV
Programmatic TV is on its way, and setting standards is the first step to getting the ball rolling. But while these standards are still in the works, how will it affect marketers already in the space?
Why the Traditional TV Buyer Will Never Use Programmatic TV
If you can look past the author’s borderline ageist commentary, he makes some solid points about the types of buyers who may be more likely to adopt new technologies. Furthermore, it includes some of the challenges you may face with folks who’ve been in the business of buying traditional TV for 20+ years.
Here Are the Five Most Over-Hyped Technologies of 2015, According to Gartner
Gartner’s latest hype cycle report discusses a few of the technologies that have generated lots of interest, but didn’t quite live up to expectations (dubbed under the category ‘peak of inflated expectations.’) Autonomous vehicles and machine learning? Overhyped. But, gesture control, VR, and enterprise 3D printing are on the verge of scaling to new heights.
For today’s digital publishers, it’s not enough to simply publish—they need to be able to play the agency role, too.
Read more on Publishing Executive
What do you think of when you hear the words Labor Day? Long weekends? Final trips? Backyard get-togethers? Well, yes – and all of those things are great ways to commemorate the end of summer. But the truth is, they do not celebrate the true meaning of Labor Day. The denotation of this red-letter day holds much more significance than most even realize. And for those of us who are fortunate enough to have jobs even though the economy is still somewhat struggling – this holiday is one that we definitely need to be thankful for. In fact, here at Centro, we wouldn’t have our paid sabbaticals, healthcare savings accounts, or even health benefits at all if it weren’t for the struggle that took place prior to Labor Day’s inception.
To offer a new perspective, let’s refer to the great Helen Keller – a symbol of courage and hope during a time when America so desperately needed one. Keller was a valiant supporter of women’s suffrage, civil rights, and the labor union movement, as well as many other worthwhile and important causes. It’s in her words, where we can truly understand the meaning of this historic holiday:
“The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker.”
Take a moment to reflect on the significance of Keller’s words. The connotation: the struggle of our past heroes and workers has brought us to where we are in the workforce (and in the world) today. Want even further insight? Take a look at the infographic below.
It’s no secret that digital media is moving at lightning speed. The industry is exploding with new technology, new tools, and, as a result, incredible new talent.
These exciting advancements allow us to do more than before, offering our clients exceptional services and exciting opportunities. As a result, media talent is more valuable than ever.
But with great growth often comes growing pains.
New positions and titles call for new skill sets, while new technology requires training and advocates to help spearhead adoption. All of this makes expertise (and experience) hard to find. Oftentimes, there’s a significant gap between a manager’s skills and the ones they actually need to hire for. And looking beyond just our needs today, if talent isn’t cultivated and nurtured for the long-haul, we could find ourselves lacking the savvy, invested managers required for a healthy future.
It’s imperative that today’s leaders control the pace as they teach, nurture, and mentor emerging talent. By managing this opportunity in the most thoughtful and inspiring ways possible, we will develop best-in-class leaders who are prepped and primed to thrive in this rapidly changing landscape.
In our latest Centro Speaks video, Scott Neslund, EVP, Client Services talks about this interesting challenge. In just two minutes, he shares great advice on future-proofing digital media by taking the time to foster talent today. Listen now!
September is here and that means we have some fresh tech positions for you! Since our founding we’ve had one goal: to improve the lives of the people behind the campaigns. That’s why we created a media management software to help people reach their business goals better, faster and smarter. In an industry of rapid growth, it’s imperative to have the best people tackling the toughest challenges and building even better solutions.
Interested in joining the Centro team? Check out our hottest tech openings of the week and apply today.
Director Technical Support – Chicago, IL
Our director technical support will first focus on Centro Direct and Centro DSP products. The chosen person will start with solving technical support challenges for these above mentioned products and building the teams that will concentrate on providing technical support for each. We offer an opportunity for talented individuals to get on board with an organization that is growing at a rapid pace. If you thrive on providing support and solve day to day challenges, you will love working with our team.
Software Engineer, Rails – Chicago, IL
Are you excited by the possibility of simplifying and streamlining the complexities of the digital advertising industry? As a software engineer at Centro you’ll spend your days building out new products while updating and expanding our existing offerings and driving revenue for both Centro and those who use our products. Our software is all about making media planners smarter and more creative, so come join our team.
Software Engineer, Backend – Toronto, Canada
Are you ready to play a key part in developing and improving Centro’s highly scalable real-time bidding platform, which processes 30B+ auctions, each within milliseconds every day. We’re looking for engineers who will actively participate and help drive innovation for new products and services.
An industry-wide countdown is on. Like it or hate it, the end of Adobe Flash is upon us.
Adobe’s Flash has long been bemoaned for its lack of cross-platform compatibility and costly security flaws. At long last, the tide is changing. Google has announced that this Tuesday, September 1st, its Chrome browser will no longer allow Flash ads to play or animate on pageload. Instead, all Flash content (including ads) will be paused automatically.
This announcement preceded several very public actions taken in July by Firefox and Facebook, and now Amazon, all of which compound the call to end Flash, once and for all.
Now playing: HTML5.
HTML5, while not particularly new, will soon become the new standard in digital ads. HTML5, unlike Flash, works in the native language of the internet, allowing designers to create Flash-like experiences. But unlike the neatly bundled Flash ad, HTML5 ads are built out of many different components all working together to deliver an engaging interactive experience.
Like any new technological adoption, we’re sure to see a learning curve in an industry used to relying on Flash – but that’s where we come in.
We’ve been getting a lot of questions about the transition. For example, what happens if I don’t switch to HTML5? Or, how do I change the way I work if I use my own third-party server? To help ensure a smooth transition, we have answers to these questions and more in our newly released Resource Center.
Our in-house experts are updating this page regularly to keep you informed on the latest news about the Flash to HTML5 migration.
As always, reach out if you have any questions about this new migration to HTML5. We’re here to help.
Zach Moore
VP, Technical Ad Ops
The world is full of things that motivate us. Today, you'll find out what motivates this Centron to run in our latest chapter of #CentronShorts. In these brief accounts, we'll give you a new look into the lives of the Centrons, in ways never before seen. And just so we are clear: no selfie sticks. Please enjoy!