Millennials, Gen Xers, and baby boomers agree that advertisers are not reaching them

BI Intelligence

Have you ever seen an advertisement and thought to yourself "what did that have to do with me?" Don't worry, you're not alone.

Many Internet users in the U.S. across multiple generations feel that advertisers have forgotten them, according to November 2015 research from Yahoo, Audience Theory, and Ipsos cited by eMarketer.

The companies surveyed 2,005 U.S. Internet users about their feelings on targeted advertising, and 25% of Gen Xers said they feel forgotten in this regard. Almost 25% of millennials and baby boomers agreed.

More than one-third of millennials and Gen Xers, and nearly that amount of baby boomers, said advertisers needed to start paying attention to them. Furthermore, 37% of millennials said they would be more likely to click an ad if they felt it was aimed at them, while 34% said they would be more likely to buy a product in that case. Gen Xers and baby boomers agreed.

Internet users frequently complain that targeted ads are invasive, but a June 2015 survey from Adadyn discovered that U.S. digital shoppers find some targeting helpful.

BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has done quite a bit of research on this topic. Of particular note is the way in which advertisers fail to reach millennials in a meaningful way on their mobile devices. And those marketers who are slow to adapt to mobile advertising are missing a chance to engage younger consumers.

For more detail on this topic, click here.

Another hurdle for advertisers is the approximately 200 million monthly active users around the world who use ad-blocking software. This is becoming more of an issue on mobile, as well, and U.S. digital media companies alone could lose out on nearly $10 billion this year if ad blocking on mobile reaches desktop levels.

Ad-block usage rates vary greatly depending on content type and audience demographics, but publishers whose audience skews toward young males, such as video game sites, tend to see much higher ad-block usage compared with general news sites. So it's crucial for advertisers to understand where their ads are going and who will be viewing (or not viewing) them.

To learn more about ad-blocking, click here.

Then there are programmatic ad-buying tools, which are fueling a dramatic uptick in the share of digital ads sold through programmatic platforms, particularly those focused on real-time bidding or RTB. BI Intelligence estimates that we have reached a "programmatic tipping point," and spending on programmatic advertising is growing by about 20% each year.

More than four-fifths of agencies and brands already purchase display ads programmatically, while an even greater proportion of publishers are pursuing programmatic channels as part of their sales strategies, according to surveys and BI Intelligence conversations with industry participants. 

To read more about programmatic ad buying, click here.

Of course, none of this matters if consumers don't even see the ads in the first place. Too often, digital ads generate in an inactive web window or a part of the screen that the user isn't seeing.

Viewability is particularly challenging for online video ads, since these ads are meant to be seen, heard, and played-through. Automated platforms for buying and selling online ads also tend to aggravate the viewability platform.

As a result, advertisers are trying new ways to solve this problem. To learn what those methods are, click here.

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