Born between the years 1946-1964, the oldest of the Boomers are beginning to retire. But today’s middle aged and older consumers are different than their predecessors. The conventional wisdom that they spend little, resist technology and are slow to adopt new products needs to be re-assessed. Boomers are an affluent group who adopt technology with enthusiasm (think about the number of parents or grandparents who regularly send e-mails or upload photos to Facebook and other sites). They have also shown a willingness to try new brands and products.

Boomers should matter to marketers and CPG companies because they spend 38.5% of CPG dollars. Yet it’s estimated that less than 5% of advertising dollars are currently targeted towards adults 35-64 years old (which includes the latter half of Generation X in addition to Boomers). With most marketers generally targeting 18-49 year olds, more than half of the affluent Boomer demographic is ignored entirely.

“Boomers should be as desirable for marketers as Millennials and Gen-Xers for years to come; they are the largest single group of consumers, and a valuable target audience. As the U.S. continues to age, reaching this group will continue to be critical for advertisers,” said Pat McDonough, Senior Vice President, Insights, Analysis and Policy at the Nielsen Company.

Consider these Nielsen facts about Boomers:

• Dominate 1,023 out of 1,083 consumer packaged goods categories
• Watch the most video: 9:34 hours per day
• Comprise 1/3 of all TV viewers, online users, social media users and Twitter users
• Time shift TV more than 18-24s (2:32 vs. 1:32)
• Are significantly more likely to own a DVD player
• More likely to have broadband Internet access at home

And if you think that the web sites Boomers visit are entirely different than those visited by adults age 18-34, you’d be mistaken: 8 of the top 10 web sites are the same:

At a time when most analysts are predicting much slower growth in consumer spending, manufacturers and marketers need to look at every opportunity to grow market share. Boomers can represent tremendous potential to those who know how to reach them.

A baseline for thinking about entertainment spending is the notion of “share of wallet,” defined here as the percentage of monthly spending for all entertainment options by a household. At a macro level, the video game category represents 5% of total U.S. households’ entertainment spending. Among households that are active buyers in the video game category, this figure is nearly double, with over 9% of total entertainment spend attributed to game-related content.

Before jumping further into the analysis, there is one important point to keep in mind. Put simply, shares do not equal dollars. Individual households spend different amounts in total on entertainment, which may deflate or inflate shares for a given category. In addition, these results are a reflection of consumer claims that are useful directionally in understanding how consumers perceive their allocations of money.

Video game category buyers (those spending at least $1 per month on game-related content) comprise 24% of U.S. households, and their share of wallet profiles paint a picture of valuable, tech-savvy entertainment consumers. Besides video games, they over-index substantially on DVD/Blu-ray, music, online entertainment, and VOD share of spending. They are also higher in share for movie-going, sports activities, and live events. These higher shares come at the expense of more established media options like basic cable and print media, where video game category buyers under-index notably.

Given the 24% buyer base, the video game category is notable for what other forms of entertainment it surpasses in share of spending for the average US home: all print media (4.2%), premium TV packages (4.1%), DVD/Blu-ray purchases and rentals (3.5%) and music in all its forms (2.8%).

More insights on gamers, console dynamics, and game buying will be featured in the inaugural Nielsen 360° Gaming Report: United States Market, available in March.

Today, the likes of Netflix, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Veoh, and Hulu are betting it has.  Instead, they’re throwing their resources into developing a new video source: online streaming movies.

These new media titans may have the right idea, according to recent research by Nielsen that found online streaming video usage almost doubled in the U.S. between 2006 and 2007.  A separate survey conducted by Nielsen in 2007 found that 40% of respondents had streamed some type of video, while just over 10% had downloaded a full movie.

But while consumer generated media streaming has taken off online, movie content streaming accounts for only about 1% of all online streaming activity, according to Nielsen. 

But that trend may be changing fast, according to a new report by Nielsen PreView.  So far in 2008, movie content streaming has grown by leaps and bounds, outpacing the growth of streamed consumer generated media, the most popular streamed content, by a factor of eight.

Online video streamers are also an increasingly engaged lot, with more people streaming online movies for longer periods of time.  Between November 2007 and May 2008, those who streamed 30 minutes or more of online video grew by 4%, according to Nielsen. 

What’s trigging the growing popularity of online streaming video?  In part: broadcast TV content available for streaming online. 

Consumers who streamed more than 43 minutes of broadcast content during a recent seven-month period had the highest likelihood of being online movie content streamers, according to Nielsen’s report.

Read Nielsen PreView’s report.

Learn more about other recent Nielsen PreView studies on R-Ratings and 3-D films.