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>> JENNY: Google and Nielsen highly believe that 2010 is going to be the beginning of
a pivotal change when it comes to media and Boomers. Now, 2010 is a pivotal year. And
why is that? The year 2010 stands as an important milestone in the life of the American experience
because in 2010, the first Boomer turns 65, an age that can--that Americans sort of considers
a traditional age to retire. And what does this means for America at large? It's important
for you guys to understand that 1/3 of all adults in America are Boomers to begin with.
So, anything that happens to this demographic is really important. And for the next 20 years,
this demographic will be approaching that definitive age of 65. And so, as they approach
that age, we will be very interested in how they're making life changing decisions with
themselves and their family. We're going to be asking the questions like, "Are they retiring?
Will they hold off more? If they retire, how will they structure their finances? Will they
travel more? Will they visit their grandkids more? Volunteer more?" And many Boomers see
the coming of age of 65 in a much different light than their prior generation. And what we're finding from our study is that
a lot of them don't see themselves as old at all. You know, as a matter of fact, life
is just beginning. So, for example, as a teaser for you, almost 1/3 of Boomers feel five to
nine years younger than their actual dates noted on their birth certificates. And the
majority of them feel more than 10 years younger. So maybe they're at retirement age on paper,
but they're actually not that age in their head or their heart. And because of this and
other factors, it's important to note that the U.S. is still gearing a lot of the advertising
towards 18 to 49 year olds and missing the Boomers percentage. Our research tells us
that only 5% of Boomers feel that advertising is really targeted for them and their peers.
Five percent, that is a really, really small specific. And so, for Boomers, we asked the
question, "Is the advertising that you see today targeted to you?" Seventy four percent
of them say that advertising is geared towards someone younger than them. And sometimes people
might argue that this doesn't matter, but you would be wrong. Of the prior generations
of retirees, Boomers today stand as the most affluent generation of retirees in America's
history. Translation, they hold the purchase power, therefore, they matter. And this affluence
is bound to affect all of America's industry and cost protocol. So, in this convergence
of the aging, the affluent Boomer, contrasted against today's media which appears to be
doing very young was sort of the inspiration behind why we ventured on this project with
Nielsen. With that out of the way, I'm going to ask Danny to take us through our research
approach and how we're supposed to tackle and understand the Boomer consumer in a 360
degree view. Danny? >> DANNY: Thanks, Jenny. In the current events--before
I start--here we go. Thanks again, Jenny for explaining what the genesis of the research
was. As Jenny mentioned, Boomers don't believe that most media is targeted towards them.
And with that as the backdrop, what we wanted to do was to really, in this project, outline
for the industry at large what exactly is Boomer media. How do they digest media? When
do they digest media? And what are their opinions on the media that they see, use and hear?
Now, as I mentioned, in order to encompass this goal, we determined that we needed to
cast a wide net possible to obtain the maximum amount of information. So what you're going
to see in today's presentation is this meant working not only with traditional syndicated
sources from the Nielsen Company, but also encompassing and incorporating research outside
traditional syndicated services like focus groups, additional surveys and other information
to add a level of depth and granularity that is only obtained by sitting down and actually
talking with the Boomers themselves. More specifically for this research, what we did
was we relied on services such as Nielsen ad plan of service, a rolling survey of 40,000
representatives of online Americans to determine what the types of product they were buying,
both online and offline; the analysts they have, the websites, the offline informational
services they rely on. We also use Nielsen's NetView channel providing website meditation
and online streaming and viewing habits. We incorporated media research, provided detection
of TV shows, when they watch, how they watch, DVR, not DVR, timeline, et cetera. And finally,
this information also incorporated more qualitative information from some of other Google's research
partners, for example in this case, Sterling Brands. So, what we were doing was supplementing
these traditional syndicated services with additional outside research as well as their
own surveys. So, we also took the added step of serving an additional 3,800 additional
individuals, online panelists to start to get us some crucial information for example,
such as what are their attitudes about what they're doing when they're streaming, what
are their attitudes when they watch TV? What are they thinking about? Trying to drive at
what was the attitude driving the behavior that we were seeing whether it be through
the click on the TV, clicking through online or viewing online as well. Now, I've mentioned
before that their source information was a focus group survey executed by Sterling Brands.
So the survey information was nice--the ClickStream is nice but what we want this Sterling Brand
information brought to us was really to play it safe on all of those information, whether
it'd be survey, whether it'd ClickStream, no matter what it was. What we wanted to do
in this study was to provide and put a face and to contextualize the teacher that we were
saying. And so with that out of the way in terms of our information, I'm going to ask
Jenny to sort of give it a little bit of more information on what those some of those qualitative
metrics were. Jenny? >> JENNY: Yes. Thanks Danny. So, yes, Dan's
correct. In addition to partnering with Nielsen on the ClickStream side and the survey side,
what we really wanted to do was sort of put a face and a story that involved or encompassed
all the detailed insights that we were receiving throughout the--that you'll be hearing about
throughout the presentation. And what you'll see is that you're going to see some excerpts
taken from a variety of online focus groups that we had with the Boomers. And we really
hope that these testimonial and quotes will help bring the data here to life. So that's
what we'll be looking for there. >> DANNY: Okay. Thanks, Jenny. Now, before
we move on, let's finally discuss what we mean by Boomer. Now, if you look at Wikipedia
and do a Google search, if you do a variety of other things, you're going to see a bunch
of different ages tossed around. We think one of the most common age groups are the
ages of 46 to 65. So, while we might see other ages out there--so this announces, we've settled
on age group of 46 to 65. And today in America, when you think about that age group, there
are about 70 million Boomers in the United States. So, if you think back to that 56th
million number that Jenny read off that we have sort of posed to the broader group at
large, what that means is that when we think about Boomers, 80% of them are online any
one month at any one time, which is an amazing amount of people, let alone, when you see
their TV habits. So, trying to understand as many--70 million Americans and what their
habits are is going to be crucial to understanding what good media is, what good content is,
and what good advertising is going to be in the coming decades. And when you think about
this group, they're the only group right now in the United States when you think about
generational spans that rival Boomers is really a Gen Y generation which we consider beginning
the ages of 18 and 30. And some other definitions you might see a little bit later today are,
for example, Gen X, a person whose aged 31 to 45, the G.I. generation, 66 to 75, and
finally the generation we call the Silent Generation, 75 plus. So what we've done to
sort of give you a sort of the scope and methodology and information we used, and with all of that
out of the way, what I want to do now is just to move on to the research at hand.
>> JENNY: Do you have a chance? Yes, advance supply thing. So the format for today's presentation
can be explained relatively easily in what we call our Puzzle Framework. So, while our
original research task was very wide met and they aren't even all the numbers behind our
sample sizes, the information that we were able to glean from the thousands of data inputs,
we've kind of logged them into four broad categories; Media, Search, Video and Purchase
Influencers. In this first section, you'll see us discuss Boomers' overall media habit
which, from our perspective, when analysis aggregative were quite surprising. Secondly,
search, of course one of these insights is to their searching behaviors in parallel to
how they might respond to overall media. And we also noticed some surprising insights here
that we'll call out. In the world of video, we begin to explore the online video habits
of Boomers and how that works in hand with other media. And then finally in the purchase
influences, we're going to start to explore what exactly drives a Boomer's purchase. And
as we go through each of these sections, Danny will outline are research for those in attendance
and at various points also work in some qualitative research from our online focus groups that
will just sort of help the data come to life a bit. Danny?
>> DANNY: Thanks, Jenny. So, the truth about Boomers and Media. This is our really first
section. Looking back the last few years, one can see that the media industry is really
changing quickly and there's a lot of excitement in recent years. So, it's really about online
and offline across technology and content. So I'm thinking about this. I'm particularly
thinking about properties, for example, such as Facebook, YouTube and the myriad of other
online related technologies that had began to create sort of an online experience like
never before. I'm also thinking about technologies. If you think about recent technologies; iPod,
iTouch, smartphones, Google Maps, getting directions while you're in traffic and finding
the best route, all of these whether it be content, whether it be technology has changed
how people approach media and has changed how people approach content. If you think
about DVRs, for example, millions of Americans now are watching most of their online TV--or
excuse me, their offline TV sometimes as DVR content. There's whole groups of people that
only watch TV through the DVR. This technology, this information, this experience did not
exist--maybe was not even predictable 10 years ago and it's really changed how people approach
media. For properties like Hulu, for example, the old is meeting the new. One can enjoy
their favorite TV shows from 10 years ago and--or someone can sit there and watch via
technologies or stream something online their favorite TV show as well. So, if you discuss
and if you think about all this phenomenon and you picture a consumer at the center of
it all, was is going to become very attached--or they sort of walk from friend to friend, colleague
to colleague to talk about this is you're really not picturing a 50-plus year old person
at the helm of driving one, any or more than one of these technologies. And yet what we
will show you, what we have seen today in this research is that very much the Boomers
are a part of this change. They are a part of the technology craze. And what we want
to do is start to expose about where the Boomers are getting involved, how they're getting
involved and with that, I want to take you through some of the information. So, one thing
if you were going to walk away from the information today is that you start to understand that
when we think about the multiple screen experience; TV, movie, online, mobile video, when you
think about these four screens, you're going to start to understand something from this
presentation, Boomers dominate the screens. When I say dominate, I don't mean that because
there's so many of them they generate more because of their size. The average Boomer
spends about a 189 hours watching one of these screens. The nearest generation, Gen Xs, 159;
Gen Y, 119. If you want to talk about the generation, the cohort that is driving screen
time, it is the Boomer that is the most engaged with the aggregate of these four screens.
What's probably more amazing is that the absolute numbers are so much larger for Boomers in
the relation to Gen Y, and that's going to be sort of one of the big metrics here. When
we set up and talked about iPod, iTouch, the streaming online videos, everyone thought
of the 30-something, everyone thought of the late 20-something, no one thought of the Boomers.
So you're going to see a lot of the comparison that we begin to make here are going to be
generated or related to, anchored against the Gen Y generation. It doesn't mean the
Gen X is important sometimes, but it means we want to draw that contrast between the
old and the new. They're about comparably sized groups of populations; 70 million and
70 million and it's a great way to compare some of this information going through.
[PAUSE] >> DANNY: The Boomers--the phenomenon of Boomers
watching more screen time is really not a phenomenon of the past or a legacy factor.
What we're seeing here is that this phenomenon of Boomers is a constant. In fact, Boomers
today are still increasingly driving even more screen time today than they were just
five years ago. In fact in 2010, Boomers represented 32% of all TV viewing in the [INDISTINCT]
phase. This is up from only 23% only 18 years ago. This is a large number and when you put
this in contrast that they're only about 25% or 26% of the population, this is a dominating
number. So, thinking back to that 189 minutes of viewing that these Boomers do, part of
this is TV time and they are driving this growth. They are driving this growth. And
it's not about their size, it's about how engaged they are with the medium. In that
sense, what you're looking at Boomers today, the cohort age 46 to 64, not only do Boomers
control 32% of all the viewing in the United States because of their size, but they're
just a generation that is geared towards watching more TV. So if you think about this age group,
this age group that we call Boomers today watches 14% more TV than their counterpart
with only 18 years ago. Now, if we look at comparably age Gen Y'ers compared to 18 years
ago, the average person 18 to 30 that's watching TV today is watching no more TV than they
did just 18 years ago. So, when you think about the number of minutes being generated,
it's this Boomer generation that is really driving a substantial portion of the growth.
They love media. Drilling down on this further, one of the phenomenon that's occurred since
1992 is that the number of choices offered to the average TV viewer just plain exploded.
And Boomers were one of those generations that has created this enhancement more wholeheartedly
than any other. For example, since 1992, today's 46 and 64 year olds, the Boomers have increased
their average of viewership of cable programs to 11.7% of all their minutes. This is higher
than any other generation out there. Probably just as interesting is that since some generations
have now grown in their TV viewing, for example Gen Y, this charge lies that these younger
generations are really shifting their TV viewing, their screen viewing from traditional broadcast
networks at a much higher rate than Boomers while Boomers in essence have dropped much
less TV. They've merely chosen to accept more when they were offered cable, they accept
that and also continued to accept the network at a higher rate than any other generation.
Boomers in essence are a media hungry segment of the population and they're hungry for more.
[PAUSE] >> DANNY: So, again, I'm drilling you back
to that 189-hour factor that we talked about a few minutes ago. And we talked about TV
a little bit, but what we're seeing here in this chart is that as we drill down to the
online time, it continues to be the same story. In this chart, we see that Boomers really
love all types of media, all types of content and all types of screens. In fact, not only
have they contributed more minutes to television but are generating as much as 91 billion minutes
online each month, outpacing each of their younger cohorts; Gen X at 87 billion, Gen
Y, 69 billion. Now, to some of you this may not seem surprising. There are more Boomers
than many other generation and as such, that 91 billion number is not as maybe more driven,
more so than its function of their size as opposed to their overall engagement. But this
is not the case as you see in the coming slides. [PAUSE]
>> DANNY: So, when we start to look at the Boomer to Boomer source consumer, you know,
against, for example, that younger Gen Y consumer, what we're starting to learn is that Boomers
are just more engaged. They are more connected online with the screens than younger. For
example, our research highlights that Boomers are online, in front of a computer screen
for about 29 hours a month. On a person to person basis, that is seven more hours on
average than the average Gen Y consumer. In essence, Boomers generate 91 billion minutes
of online viewing because they're really more engaged with the online medium more so than
their size. But how can this be? This is sort of running in contrast to what people are
thinking. You know, Boomers, most people falsely believe they're different than you and me.
They're different from younger generations and hence, you know, they can't go online
as much as some of the other consumers. They can't be as engaged, for example, as my son
or my daughter or my college student or my recent grad, and this just isn't true. In
fact, you'd be hard pressed to determine who is the Boomer and who is the Gen Y consumer
purely by their ClickStream habit as we're about to show you. So, what we've laid out
here in this chart is a ranking of the top websites between Boomers and Gen Y. But I
think what this sums up is that Boomers have a lot more in common with Gen Y and really
the average online viewer and the average online clicker, streamer, whatever the word
you want to call, than you may have thought originally. In fact, let's look at, for example,
the top 10 websites most frequently visited by Gen Y. We're going to see, you know, what
casual usual suspects with the Google and the Yahoo!, Bing, Facebook, you know, are
all there amongst a few others. What's probably most surprising to us is that Boomers are
really interested in the same websites, the same locations and the same content information.
Any of the top 10 websites most frequented by Gen Y are also similarly frequented by
the Boomer generation. You know, Boomers are probably more savvy than we give them credit
for. They look a lot more like the average Americans than we give them credit for, online
than probably most of us had thought. So eventually the question, you know, this is running counter
of what we think and it begs the question "What's causing these Boomers to go online?"
And we found some interesting information from the survey of 3,800 analysts. You know,
what we saw that prompted Boomers to go online, 62% of Boomers find that conversations in
their daily lives with friends and families on a wide range of issues is what prompts
a Boomer to go online and to look for information. As many as 55% of them actually look up information
intending to share or intending to give that information to someone else; they're not looking
for themselves, they're looking for someone else. And that is going to be a common theme
that you see the Boomer attitude, the Boomer experience is involved in. You know, they
are the givers. They are the volunteers. They are the ones who want to give back. And they
are this generation, as you're going to see, that's very engaged with people both outside
the family and inside the family. So, yes, they're concerned about themselves but they
always have others in mind as well; their wives, their children, their parents. And
think about this, you know, their parents who are aging. So they're in that special,
unique, sort of apex of information that, you know, they still have children but they
have parents who are getting older. So, in a lot of ways, the Boomers are at the time,
at the age where both the old and younger generations, in a lot of ways, call on them,
need them. And this is part of the prompting influence that asks them to go online. Now,
because of the Boomers' unique point of view in their families, sort of that, you know,
squished between that, you know, the old and young, they're really just as connected as
many of us when it comes to technologies like cell phones. So, Boomers have--has many standard
cell phones as the average American which helps them to adjust sort of their busy and
connected lives. However, their embracement of technology is not necessarily consistent.
So, what we've been talking about before is that, you know, Boomers look like you and
me. Boomers look like everyone else. When we start to get into the realm of cell phones,
and that's still the case, but when we start to get into the realm of smartphones, that's
really not as much the case. You know, what--while 32% of all Americans own a smartphone, you
know, designed to having its own operating system able to search the web, only 21% of
all Boomers find so they have such a phone. So, here is where Boomers, active, engaged,
volunteering, on the go, but they're really not engaging as much with the smartphone.
But if we dug a little deeper into the story, we can see definitely that there is very advanced
niches of consumers within Boomers that do stay ahead of this technological trend. And
this begins to expose one of those other truisms that we've spoken about that we've been able
to isolate specifically about the Boomers. They are busy. These Boomers are busy, they
are engaged with their lives, yet they are extremely, extremely eager to learn more,
eager to learn something new. They want what makes sense for the family, but they learn--the
Boomers learn by doing, by being shown how to do something, by talking with somebody
on how to do something. If you put a smartphone in the average home of 100 Boomers, they'll
probably leave the phone there. That's just the reality of it. They do not usually choose
to figure out technology on their own. However, they will not--they will not even open a manual,
they do not like doing them. They need to be shown how to do that. But if they're surrounded
by friends and family that use it, that talk it, that walk it, that use it, they are not
afraid to ask questions, they are not afraid to engage you. And so, what we're able to
do is start to tear down these levels. So we saw that comparing, for example, Boomers
that have young children in the household versus Boomers that do not, you begin to see
the impact of who the Boomers are and their openness to learn, but how they learn change
the story. So, for example, Boomers that have young children in the household, 28% of them
own a smartphone. That is right on track with the average American. They are engaged just
like you and me, but they learn a little bit differently, they have a secret learning curve.
They learn with friends. They learn with family. They learn by talking. Contrast this with
Boomers without children in the household, only 19% of them own a smartphone. So, you
know, what are we learning here? They've got this, you know, adoption curve of learning
that we--they need to learn that they need to go, and they learn a certain way. And if
we can take advantage of that, they will be just as engaged, going toe to toe with any
average American that you can have out there. Now we have, I think, great slides of some
of those adoptions curve learning. So I'd like to have Jenny take us through. And hopefully,
Jenny, you can do that now. >> JENNY: Yes. Thanks, Dan. And I just want
to show the audience two snippets that we've got from our all web focus group that I think
really tease nicely into some of those data that you just presented to us. So, allow me
to share the first one. "We bought the Droid last week for me and both my kids. I don't
use a lot of the apps on my phone yet because I just bought it, but I'm looking forward
to researching those. I'm going to let my kids let me know what to do. It takes so much
time and effort to do it all by yourself; they have nothing but time." And that was
shared with us by Jerry W. from Arizona. Susan from Utah shared with us, "My son and I both
got a Kindle One when they came out. Then we both upgraded to the Kindle Two when they
came out. My mother has my Kindle One and my daughter has the other Kindle." So what
we're seeing here, and these are just two snippets, but we saw this again and again
is that families who adopt technology together make it almost like a family activity. And
these--they are able to--Boomers are able to ramp up so much more quickly on technology
when they have kids or involve the kids. And you can see that a lot of times, they're actually depending
on the kids to figure it out and then show them the key things that they should know.
And then once they'll know those key things, they'll sort of opt on it on, you know, they
are using it all the time, they'd become very efficient. They almost--they almost try to
cheat the system in a way and make it even more efficient for themselves by leading on
their kids to do the heavy lifting. And then you will also see--but we also saw a lot of
it was people upgrading to different technologies. So, what happens when we upgrade? You usually
end up giving out the older version to family and friends who aren't as regular users and
that's how they get exposed. So families who are into technology, we could see that there's
a sort of amplified assess when they have this group adoption. So thanks, Dan. I wanted
to share that with the audience. >> DANNY: Great. Thanks, Jenny. And, you know,
as--just a sort of--sort of build on what Jenny said, you know, Boomers are comfortable
in their own shell. They're comfortable saying "I don't know." They want to learn more. And
so, if they are not engaging in technology, in part it may be because of how that technology
is being exposed to them and looking in the right scenarios with family, friends, passed
down technology, you're going to catch a different view of what the Boomer is and how they approach.
And that's something certainly to log as we think about media as advertising, as general
content. That's something to keep in mind as some of the background to a conversation
with the Boomer. Probably another truism we talked about is that, you know, we talked
about Boomers are not afraid of the new, but they also embrace the new from the old. And
one of the representations of this is, for example, cable programming, for example. TVs
on there, online comes in, they embrace it. They adopt. They're now the number one premium
channel subscribers in the United States and they are not afraid to engage in new techniques,
new technologies once they know how to use it, once they know how to embrace it, once
they know how to make it part of their lives. And friends are part of that system. We've
seem smartphones are a way to do that. It's all about this air of familiarity. A friend
or family can make something familiar but also a brand can be something familiar to
them. So, one of the other phenomenon that we're seeing is that some of the online properties
that have benefited most substantially from the Boomers are the ones that have an offline
strong [TECHNICAL] with the Boomers themselves. So, for example, if we look at magazine category
benchmarks from our app line service, we'd [TECHNICAL] 45 magazines that were strong
engagements, you know, big selling brands; The Rolling Stones, People Magazines, et cetera
who had both offline presence and a strong online presence. And what we saw, for example,
was something like this: in that category benchmark, Boomers--and really, Gen Y are
just as equally engaged in those magazines offline, you know. They're getting it just
as many viewers or readerships amongst these categories for Boomers as we are, maybe a
little bit less for Gen Y. And now go online, so a phenomenon, a world most people would
argue is the purview of a younger consumer and what we're seeing here is that if you
look at the online viewers, the online readership of magazines that are more substantially based
in sort of the offline world, you know, again, People Magazine and Rolling Stones, it is
the Boomers embracing this. So, while you see some of the average index of the Gen Y
embracing that online versus off, it is the Boomers who over indexed on this technology
instead of embraced that energy, that information offline and it's because they're familiar
with it. You know, they will engage with the property. They will engage with the brand
when they're familiar with it, whether it be somebody from friends and families or familiar
through their own sort of brand residence from years ago. You know, and again, there's
a couple of examples. What we've drilled down on here, you know, Rolling Stone, you know,
28% more Boomers are online unique visitors than you might expect, whereas Gen Y under
indexing by 49% on People Website, getting their average representation of online Boomers;
Maxim Website 15% more Boomers than you might have expected. So, a bunch of Websites that
you would really expect maybe Boomers not to be engaged, and really, you know, online
is not "the purview" of Boomers. What we're seeing here is that they're embracing it at
a stronger, greater level than you might have expected in part because it's something that
they're familiar with. It's something that they can rate--relate to and make it more
easy leap to it. [PAUSE]
>> DANNY: So far what we've learned is that Boomers have embraced more streams than any
other generation. Generated more total minutes than anyone of these other generations for
almost all of the streams, and in many cases, are more engaged sometimes with then--even
younger generations. We've also talked about the fact that top Websites for Boomers and
Gen Y are really about the same with information seeking sites such as Google and Wikipedia
are sort of rolling out some of these top lists. So what we'd like to do is start to
understand, you know, one of the other big phenomenon that we've seen in terms of how
the Boomers engaged in searching for information, you know, Google is top. Wikipedia topped.
They are information hunters and part of this is relating to the fact of their stage of
life. What you're going to see is that Boomers need to know things. They're aging. Their
body's changing. Their parents are aging. They need to learn new things. They are in
such--in high learning curve in terms of their parents, retirements, so many other things
going on. Kids graduate in college. They are in a high need-to-know zone. And what we're
going to see is that how they approach and how they act are going to be very different
and very interesting. [PAUSE]
>> DANNY: Just a quick note here, I know we only have about 22 minutes left, so you're
going to catch--I--I am not shy in talking fast. You catch me picking up the pace a little
bit. So, if I'm talking a little bit fast, I'm just trying to leave time for our questions.
And so certainly when you get a moment, ask those questions to me, I'd be glad to ask
them when we get there. So Boomers are data seekers. What we see is that Boomers are online,
as discussed, and a lot of this really has to do with information seeking. In the last
year, Boomers on average had about 23 search sessions any one month. That's actually more
than Gen Y. They search on average four times more than or they have in occasion search
four times more than the average Gen Y'ers. You know and you might--you might be interested
to know that in total aggregate searches, it's about 60 Gen Y in gen and the Boomers
are about the same. So what this implies is that Boomers have more occasion search, but
when they do, they're actually less likely to just--to generate as many search queries,
whereas the other generations, when they generate a search session, will tend to fire off four,
five, six, seven, eight individual searches. Boomers are a lot more focused or maybe they
know what they're looking for. They'll get on for your search session and they're probably
only going to search about two or three tops. And so, understanding how a Boomer approaches
a search occasion, they need to know occasion. It's going to be really important because
they're not going to fire off 10, 12, 13 searches in a row. They're going to keep it to two
or three. So understanding that and how they approach has really become important. And
now, it looks like Jenny is going to take us through an example of that sort of representative
of that occasion. >> JENNY: Right. So Shirley from our online
focused group shares with us, "I research everything from new recipes and cooking. If
I want creative table decorations, if I want to do some crafts with the grandkids, different
types of medications. It's very easy for me to get that information. I am doing some sort
of search two or three times a day and I get my answers quick and easy." I just wanted
to mention that that aspect about research and online for information on things to do
with the grandkids. So, that is a theme that we saw over and over again. You saw the answers
to that before that oftentimes Boomers are acting with others in mind. So when it comes
to the grandkids, they are all about being super grand parents. And in some ways, sort
of the whole recession bit and the budget goes out the window. You see a lot of them
purchasing online for the grandkids, doing direct shipping straight to them and oftentimes
getting a whole second set of fill in the blanks for having the grandkids over. So,
whether that be a car seat, diapers, either the types of items that the--that Boomers
are still purchasing, it's not for any other reason than to have a set handy when the grandkids
come to the house to visit. So that is a theme that we saw again and again in our online
focused groups and are also supported in our data.
>> DANNY: Great. Thanks, Jenny. And I think this also brings up a nice transition to what
our next slide is which is very simply, you know, what do Boomers search for. Now, in
both sides, we need the opportunity to ask 3,800 consumers, "Which of the following types
of information do you search for?" So, what you see here is a cross X, Y axis, a list
of categories to which we ask this question. And on the vertical--then the X axis, with
entertainment, news, shopping, beauty and recipes as that woman has just mentioned.
And on the Y vertical are the percentage respondents responding that they had actually done or
completed the search in the recent, you know, 30 days or so. So what appears from this information
is that Boomers actually search for information really considerable throughout the generation.
They have the same full print as an Xer or Gen Y. They're really no different. Probably
one area of interest appears to be entertainment, images or video. This is also a common theme.
Boomers are not going to necessarily search or seek out images or search or seek out videos
or entertainment to the level that a Gen X'er a Gen Y'er will be doing. However, what you'll
see later on is that they do have a need for video. They do have a need for other entertainment
that we can exhibit that is pretty consistent. And we'll take you to that in a few slides.
[PAUSE] >> DANNY: So what our research did highlight
though is that while Boomers don't hunt for entertainment information, they certainly
can be affected by what they see on TV. So what we saw was that while they don't actually
search for content as frequently as other generations, they're just as likely to have
searched on something based on something they've seen on TV. Now this is really not surprising.
So, what we talk about is that Boomers work within the range of things that they're familiar
with. So that they are on a website or a TV show, and so they'll go to this Website, get
this. Get this coupon, get this information. Boomers are toe to toe holding their own and
just as likely as any other generation to exhibit that same behavior to do them. You
know, they are comparable at the aggregate level and they finally enter when they've
seen something that they're more familiar with and they're willing to hit out. Now as
discussed, you know, Boomers do as many searches and typically for the same content as other
generations, again, with the exception of entertainment content. However, once the search
options and the links pop up, Boomers start to differentiate a way from the pact. As you
remember, we've talked about Boomers really don't do as many searches as the average Gen
Y'er or the average online searcher. You know, they do as many searches, but searches for
need or occasion. They, like, don't go as deep as some of the other generations. And
this--part of this is their relationship with sponsored links. Sixty nine percent of Boomers
is, like, clicking on a sponsored link. In contrast, not only 15% of Gen Y'ers confirm
that they actually clicked on a sponsored link. As you'll see, why Boomers clicked on
the ads at a higher rate showcases play their attitude and that what drives this generation
when they're online. So, the reality is, as you're looking for this information, is that
when we're looking at the perceived purpose of sponsored links or what they perceived
or what consumer--Boomers perceive sponsored links to be, Boomers really see sponsored
links really as their friend. Thirty percent of them said that sponsored links were useful
in helping them with their searches, contrast this to only 19% of Gen Y that say sponsored
links are actually functional or actually useful. Now the reason for this usefulness
were many but Boomers are more likely than Gen Y to say that these links were really
some of the most relevant options for mySearch. Fifteen percent said it is the most valid
options compared to only 9% for Gen Y. In essence, Boomers click more because they find
the links useful, functional, maybe they even trust links to be more relevant and helpful
than other generations. So, you know, I'm just saying now how much time Boomers spend
online, it's also easy to understand or really maybe into this misfit level engagement as
anything but, you know, what we say current. If Boomers are online and then they can't
be on the websites. Well, we already showed you that's not true. While Boomers are online,
there's no way they're searching as much as young--younger generations. We haven't seen
[INDISTINCT] to be true. So, what we've seen so far is, there are a few and far occasions
where we can distinguish between Boomers and maybe some of the younger generations like
Gen Y and what we want to do with some of the exhibit and look at video. So video really
seems to be one of those areas obviously that's exploding, but maybe aren't as familiar to
Boomers, so we wanted to sort of exhibit this and in the next few slides explore how Boomers
approach online media video. And what we found is that how these consumers are approaching
this, are really different and we want to sort of explore their approach on this media.
[PAUSE] >> DANNY: So, first off all, probably one
of the more surprising things, we know Boomers are online but, you know, we're also seeing
that Boomers are holding their own when it comes to embracing the websites like YouTube,
Hulu and Netflix. Our research highlighted that Boomers are capturing more than their
fair share occasionally from the video websites. In fact, 26% of the unique visitors to YouTube
are actually Boomers. They're getting their expected share of U.S. population for this
website. So another way to--26% of Americans are Boomers and 26% of YouTube visitors are
Boomers. They're really holding their own but YouTube is not a fluke. If you look at
Netflix as well as Hulu, Boomers are pulling in their fair share of these sites as well.
In essence, Boomers are not only engaged in online, in general, but they are searching.
They're streaming video. They're engaging under these technologies in a way that many
people are not embracing or at least, understanding when they market to them. But one of the more
interesting things probably is that, they are engaging in this video but when you look
at the types of videos that they're engaging in, it begins to break down and so it starts
to exhibit where this information first changed in relation to some other generations. So
one way to think about videos is to break it up based on the length of the content.
So while there are no hard fast rules per se on what is long, short, or mid-form, we've
chosen to utilize some of the following definitions. For example, let's go to short form video,
less than 15 minutes; mid-form video 15 to 30, finally, let's go long form video 30 minutes
plus. If we can utilize these definitions and look at the long form and the short form
and sort of create the broadest disparity between these groups, what we begin to see
is that Boomers when they're online viewing are much more engaged with the long form content
as compared to short form content. For example, in the blue bars above, one can see that in
the long form video category, Boomers are digesting on average, 365 minutes of long
form video a month. Over three times more than the short form video consumption 15 minutes
and under. Boomers, it really appears, find less utility within the shorter form content
and more utility in the longer form content. Things like movies. Things maybe they're more
familiar with, you know, we know their media hump, we know they love cable, pay-per-view,
HBO, they love all of that. It's probably not surprising that they're going to embrace
the essence of that in long form video online source. In contrast, you can see that generations
like Gen Y are equally open to both longer and shorter form content. However, despite
these differences, this really doesn't imply that Boomers do not find utility in short
form video. For some short form video content, Boomers are just more engaged than many other
segments. For example, we started to understand this further by going into the YouTube definition
and you're going to see that what we've asked--is that we've asked Jenny and some of your fellow
Googlers to begin to say, if they don't watch as much short form video, what are they watching?
And when we compared this to the X populations, what we saw was that, certain video types
did explode, did break through as extremely engaging to Boomers and so with that, I'd
like Jenny to sort of take us some of the--through some of those results.
>> JENNY: Thank Dan. So before we saw that definitely YouTube got its fair share of the
Boomer audience so, of what we did was to look at this pool called the [INDISTINCT]
for audiences for YouTube. And we're able to see what categories really interests Boomers
in terms of viewing content. And this is--these are categories as defined by YouTube. You
know, see up there all the blue bars which--that states how much they over invest versus the
regular adult. So, Boomers, both male and female are viewing these categories more so
than the average adult. And what we're going to notice is that, a lot of these categories
are high utility, high purpose, high function. And that's a theme that we saw again and again
and again. So, they're interested in going to a finance video, understanding how to invest,
tips on what the best investments might be in this state of economy, [INDISTINCT] insurance,
[INDISTINCT] how to manages their portfolios. They're interested in travel videos, taking
those cruises, maybe even how to pack their luggage efficiently for traveling. They're
actually open to this kind of content, a lot of 'how to'. Now, one might want to ask, as
a marketer, is there enough of this content even on YouTube? Is there an opportunity to
put more out there? Because we know for sure that Boomers hate instruction manuals, they
hate them with a vengeance. They will not need them but they will definitely be open
to watching 'how to' videos. An idea there would be to take instructions and put it in
a video form and I think that Boomers would be a lot more receptive to that form of communication.
Dan? >> DANNY: Thanks, Jenny. And that's really
a nice [INDISTINCT] for our next session which is, you know, how can we get the Boomers to
buy? And Jenny was just [INDISTINCT] up the fact that, if you become a better partner
with them; teach them the technology--if you can imagine--I'm just going to make some stuff
here, but, imagine the Sony channel on YouTube where instead of downloading your manual,
you can download your manual how to with our video component showing you how to do any
and all things with your video camera. That is something a Boomer would want to know,
a Boomer would want to learn, a Boomer would want to see. And I think it's just speaking
their language. It's being this consultative friend or family member that is going to digest
this information, that's going to [INDISTINCT] close the deal for Boomers. So at this point
of the presentation, we start to get a sense that, you know, Boomers are starting to retire
but they're nothing like the retirees of 10 years ago. They're in games, they're online,
they're looking for information and they should matter, why? You know, very simply, most of
America's wealth is deftly tied up in one generation. And with this much wealth and
understanding, what we wanted to do is [INDISTINCT] tear a part and understand how Boomers begin
to make purchase decisions. So, if you want to sell to Boomers, you really need to pull
out all the stops. So, this is one of those generations that we've talked about that is
really straddling both the old and the new. Do they use the Internet? You bet they do.
Seventy one percent of Boomers cite that they use the Internet to make a purchase decision.
That is the number one response. However, that 71% is average. It's just like you, me,
younger, older, it is the average response. However, Boomers are not willing to let go
of other things. So, Boomers still love catalogs and brochures, an over index on utilizing
that by 21%. They still love direct mail, over indexing 21%. And even 800 and toll free
numbers, over indexing 37%. So, when you think about the Boomer consumer, it's really pulling
all the stops. Get that 360 degrees marketing campaign together because the Boomers is the
ideal consumer to tie all together. As we've seen, Boomers site the Internet as their number
one source of information, and they love [INDISTINCT] highlights. And what does this actually have
to do--[INDISTINCT] with the direct mail or the types of materials they see? Forty-four
percent of Boomers cited actually utilizing search engines to find out more about something
that they read about the mail that was sent to their home. So, speak to them in the old
ways but expect them to respond in the new, is sort of a maxim that you want to consider
with Boomers. When you speak to Boomers--when you get them to respond to that mail, to dial
that 800 number, understand that Boomers are one of the more--they're one of the least
brand loyal groups out there. Boomers are open to change. When you think about Boomers,
80% of Boomers self-report themselves to be less brand loyal than their younger Gen Y
counterparts. Are we implying that, at least from a personal point of view, that for them
to be open--for them to be reached to and spoken to, they're open to switching brands,
you just need to talk to them and to engage in a way that they're used to or want to see
or hear. Now, when Boomers are online, you know, one of their maxims has been, on deals
are really nice but they're not necessary. You know, 70% of Boomers use an online source
but we should be careful about what we mean by this, you know, Boomers use Search to provide
information, they've used it and utilized information for the decision and maybe open
to switching brands. So they do not need big discounts to complete the deal. When we ask
how motivating the variety of online sales and discounts would be in driving in single
purchase. Boomers at best, were average in responding yes, that would interest me, and
for example, coupons, they under index 7% sales at discount, under index 3% gift sets
under index 15%. They are not sold on buying something online for the sake of the deal.
They buy it because they need it. They buy it because it's useful, because you've sold
it to them. [PAUSE]
>> DANNY: We mentioned early too, that Boomers' generation now is trailing both, the old and
the new. And for a lot of Boomers, family time is more important than ever. One way
which Boomers are exhibiting [INDISTINCT] is by actually taking vacation trips and paying
for trips online. Fifty-five percent of Boomers said that they'll pay for the whole bill,
the whole vacation for themselves, their family, and the extended family. Why? Because it's
a way for them to stay connected. As we mentioned, many Boomers are some of the wealthiest retirees
the U.S. has ever seen and they have the funds to cover such retirements and such vacations.
[PAUSE] >> DANNY: And to get a sense of what kind
of trips they want to go on, we posed the question amongst the Boomers who said that,
"The financial crisis had affected to how they want to approach the market place." How
were they going to adjust their trip? Most Boomers over index on the fact that they wanted
to shorten the trip but keep the destination. In essence, if I'm going to the Bahamas for
five days, I'd rather go for three days than do a week trip to California. If they want
something stunning, if they want high value, if they want high-quality, they still want
it. They'll just get less of it. They do not want to go local. They do not want to bargain
hunt. They'd rather shorten the trips and keep that destination, that wish alive, that
dream alive. That's what they want to do. And to give you a sense of the quality of
the life they wanted to live and probably because of being [INDISTINCT], so I'm going
to wrap up in the next three minutes and to leave some room for questions. But quick stats
here, 50% of Boomers have spent in the last year was--they've been spending over $500
a year. When you think about that as the average Boomer, multiply it by 70 million Americans
or 70 million Boomers, that is a lot of money and this is the information, this is the money
that's out there when you think about approaching the Boomers. And one way to exhibit this,
when you look at the heaviest online spenders of category and contrasted that with Boomers
to see where they were getting--where they were majority of that population. And what
we saw is that gourmet, auctions, hotels, travel, rental, tickets, entertainment, Boomers
were driving or becoming a much larger--a part of this--for these categories than one
would ever expected in terms of heavy spending so a lot of the high ticket items, concert
tickets, collectibles, hotel, travel, all of that, Boomers are driving a lot of that
and this is the opportunity that's out there. [PAUSE]
>> DANNY: And so finally, what I wanted to wrap up with is Boomers value high utility.
So one of the things that we talked about is that Boomers are willing to go to websites
and you see here that Boomers represented for Amazon, 32%; eBay, 32%; Wal-Mart, Bank
of America. The Boomers that are online are the ones engaging online, they're engaging
in high utility. So whether it's banking, whether it's purchasing, whether it's Craigslist
for functionality, whether it's Wikipedia for information, the Boomer consumer is a
high utility consumer and that is who they are and they're really--that utility concept
is a driving force of this group. So, what I want to do is to sum up sort of this [INDISTINCT]
and, you know, I apologize, I'm rushing through this backend a little bit, we're running out
of time. But, you know, Boomers are the sponges for content and media, you know, Boomers are
easy target for advertisers. They can be saturated and they will hunt for the content, embrace
them. Saturate them with content and speak to them in their same language. Our Boomers
sit on an aided adoption curve. When you think about Boomers, you don't tell them how to
do it, you show them how to do it. Jenny mentioned videos would be a great way, online sites.
The way Verizon for example has sort of a 'show me' session. Like, Home Depot has a
'show me' session, the Apple store has a 'show me' session. All that speaks to the Boomer
consumers. Boomers are most comfortable straddling both the familiar and the new. So when you
think about that, the extended brands, the brands that exist offline, you have a built-in
advantage with the Boomers online. Use that. And finally Boomers are curious and a thoughtful
demographic. They value quality. They value family. Speak to them in that light. Speak
to them in that vein and they will respond. So with that, what I wanted to do is open
up the Q&A session so Jenny's going to take us through your thoughts and let me know--what
we're going to do is we're going to ask everyone is to look at that chat feature to the right
and I'm going to ask you to type in any questions that you may have. [INDISTINCT] two minutes
for those questions are coming, I'm going to try to answer them as quickly as possible.
I see that some of you have to go. I certainly understand that but shoot out your questions
as much as possible... >> JENNY: Dan, since we're so short on time.
I just wanted to mention that everyone will get a soft copy of this presentation linked
in the thank you follow up email so no worries on that. And a lot of you guys have been asking
a few questions along the way and that we've been peppering your answers right back at
you. And thank you so much for hanging on for such a long time. I did see that everyone's
attention was still with us so, thank you for that. We really do hope that you guys
found the information valuable. We have an extra few minutes, we don't mind hanging around
if you want to pin us extra questions, feel free to do so, Dan and I will hang around
and answer them for you. So otherwise, enjoy the rest of your afternoon. And please also
fill out the survey feedback form because that's what we rely on to know whether or
not we did a good job, so thanks for that.