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.

According to Shimmel, shifting to online video mainly appears to be happening in small pockets of the population, including young, emerging households. Households with no cable subscriptions at all, but who subscribe to a broadband service, also reflect a younger population of college graduates and lower to middle income consumers who may not be fully convinced of the need to pay for digital cable. However, Nielsen data shows that these individuals are typically light TV viewers who watch 40% less TV per day than the national average. And while they stream about twice the average amount of video, they still only stream about 10 minutes per day, hardly an indication of a monumental shift to online-only viewing.

There’s no question that marketers and researchers will be eagerly watching this demographic to see whether their viewing habits change over time, but for now the idea of a cord-cutting revolution appears to be purely fiction.

Fast Facts

• The number of people per month viewing online video increased 6% year-over-year.
• There was a 9% increase year over year in the amount of time per month people spent online.
• Online video streaming still only accounts for less than 2.5% of total video consumption across all demographics.
• Among heavy video streamers 12-34, there are significant shares of time allocated to streaming.

“Consumers are driven by the convenience and quality that today’s technology now enables,” said Matt O’Grady, Executive Vice President, Audience Measurement. “New mobile devices and enhanced TV quality allow viewers to engage in more content than ever before.”

More than half of US TV households now have HDTV, up 189% from the first quarter of 2008, and more than one-third now have DVRs, up 51%.  High-speed broadband Internet access, now in 63.5% of homes, has created a better user experience for watching online videos and nearly a quarter of households have smartphones, enabling consumers to “place shift” and watch video wherever they are.  Despite the common perception that viewers of videos on mobile phones are predominantly teens, more than half (55%) are adults aged 25-49. While mobile online video viewing is still fairly limited, year over year growth is notable at 51.2%.

TV still remains the preferred screen of choice: viewers watched 2 more hours of TV per month in the first quarter of 2010 compared to the same period a year prior (158:25 vs. 156:24).  They are also continuing to simultaneously use the Internet while watching TV, with the average time spent doing both activities up 9.8% to 3 hours and 41 minutes.

As of Q1 2010 the 292 million people in the US with TVs spend on average 158 hours, 25 minutes each month tuning into television.  Q1 2010 data shows that 138 million people watching video on the Internet spent on average 3 hours, 10 minutes during the month doing so.  As of 1Q10 the 20.3 million people who watch mobile video in the US spend on average 3 hrs, 37 minutes each month watching video on a mobile phone.

• Download Nielsen’s latest Three Screen Report.

SUMMARY: This article illustrates how a multi-platform media brand like CNN is using fusion data to create integrated advertising opportunities across its platforms by quantifying each platform’s total and incremental reach on top of their TV audience for the news category.

Divided attention
Technological advances are helping to form the dynamics between consumers and media companies. The menu of media platforms has grown to include platforms like the Internet, mobile, and social media. These new media vehicles are not replacing old media; rather, they are dividing consumers’ attention among multiple media touch points and driving media companies to actively develop content and advertising strategies that optimize these shifts in behaviors. While most media companies are striving for cross-platform success from both TV and the Internet, only a handful of networks get incremental lift from their online properties today, which is vital to increasing overall market share.

Tracking your cross-platform footprint
The industry finally has data to better capture where there is incremental lift—the data is based on actual behavior, not self-reported survey usage. Through a statistical matching process, Nielsen’s TV/Internet fusion links television audience information from the National People Meter Panel with Internet usage from the Nielsen Online NetView Panel.

The fusion analysis allows media companies to evaluate their media genre/category and uncover how that company’s TV and Internet components affect their audience interaction with their media brand.

News you can use
Focusing on the News genre media footprint, Nielsen’s analysis identified people who consumed News information via TV only, Internet only and both TV and Internet. News TV is made up of all News genre available from broadcast to cable. The News websites grouping consist of CNN, Fox News and MSNBC digital Networks, AOL News and Yahoo News.

In the month analyzed, approximately 143 million people consumed News information through the identified media sources as follows:

• 81 million accessed news on TV only
• 60 million accessed news on both TV and online
• 1.5 million accessed news online only

The cross-platform audience portion—classified by CNN as “Integrators”—is a highly desirable audience not only because of the size, but also due to their time spent with the category. These category Integrators spent nearly 12 hours each month consuming news content on TV and online — nearly 30% more than people who only consume news on TV.

Who are the news media integrators?
There exists the ongoing debate about whether emerging media cannibalize or complete existing media, and this new fusion data provides insight to the relationship between the various media.

A key finding from the study revealed that consuming news on multiple platforms is not a zero-sum game. The average number of days each network is viewed, and the number of days each network website is visited, is greater among people who use both platforms than people who only view news on TV or people who only consume news online.

Having this integrated audience—one that accesses content on TV, online and via other platforms—has benefits both to the media company in terms of engagement and to the advertiser in terms of being able to use these important platforms within the halo that the media brand provides.

Among the three news brands identified, CNN has a distinct advantage over Fox News Channel and MSNBC in terms of the size of their integrated audience and the engagement, or number of minutes consumed on TV and online.

Each day, CNN Integrators consume 154 million minutes of the CNN brand on TV and online—nearly double the amount of minutes consumed to Fox News among Fox News Integrators, and 50% more than the amount of minutes consumed to MSNBC among MSNBC Integrators.

Actionable results
By examining the cross-platform footprint, media companies can better develop and cross-promote their content on TV and online optimizing their brand reach to this growing Integrator segment. Regardless of the category, this analysis serves as a tool for media companies to: 1) maintain existing brand loyal Integrators, 2) understand which platform provides the most growth potential from multi-platform consumers, and 3) help to develop strategies to transition Integrators who are less brand loyal to one of their brand platforms.

As of Q3 2008, the average American watched approximately 142 hours of TV per month — five hours more than they watched in a typical month during the same period a year ago.

Americans who used the Internet were online 27 hours a month, and people who used a mobile phone spent 3 hours a month watching mobile video.

Men were more likely than women to watch via mobile phone, while women were more likely then men to watch video online.

DVR usage was up significantly (52.5%) in Q3 2008, compared with Q3 2007.  Americans spent more than six hours per month watching timeshifted TV — double the amount of time they spent watching video online.  The only exception: 18-24 year-olds, who consumed more video online (four hours, 48 minutes) than via DVR (four hours, 36 minutes).

During the 2007-08 television season, the average U.S. household took in eight hours and 18 minutes of TV per day, a record high since Nielsen started measuring television in the 1950’s.

“TV use is at an all-time high, yet people are also using the Internet more often — 31% of which is happening simultaneously,” Susan Whiting, vice chairperson, Nielsen, noted.

Download the report.

Learn more about viewing across the “three screens” – view Manish Bhatia, of Nielsen, addressing the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s December 2008 forum.