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It’s getting too easy to talk about the 18- to 34-year-old technophiles for whom phone-as-entertainment-platform is already second nature. I’m going to root for an underdog.
While Generation Xers and Yers are playing an important role in growing the mobile media market-18- to 34-year-old users made up 54% of the mobile video market in the second quarter-we can’t afford to lose the mobile video engagement of another critical audience of wireless subscribers: baby boomers. Mobile video will be an important way for operators to retain boomers as subscribers and drive revenue within this segment.
Boomer statistics
One in five mobile video users is 45 and older. Put differently, there are already nearly as many mobile video users in the 45-54 age range as there are in the 18-24 range (1.5 million compared with more than two million, respectively). Still, a quick scan of mobile video decks leaves one wondering whether we’re putting forth enough compelling mobile video content for the important boomer audience.
Telephia, a service of The Nielsen Company, recently released its latest Mobile Video Report, which supports this concern: 23% of users ages 45-54 said their video usage had declined in the prior month, compared with just 15% of users overall. Among several key demos, the 45-54 break was the only one in which there were more users watching less mobile video, month-over-month, than more. In terms of the overall experience, users 45 and older were also more likely than the total population to be dissatisfied with the types and amount of available mobile video content. Just 44% of mobile video users 45-54 said they were satisfied with the amount of available video content, compared with 57% of all mobile video users.
Compelling content
To be clear, I’m not saying we’ve totally overlooked the boomer audience in mobile video. This audience has found some compelling content on the platform. Enough so that users 45-54 are the most likely to report average viewing sessions of 30 minutes or more. Twenty-two percent of users 45-54 said their average viewing session in the second quarter of this year was 30 minutes or more, compared with just 19% of users aged 18-24, according to Telephia. Moreover, boomers show a much higher frequency when watching their favorite types of channels.
Still, the data suggest that engagement with this segment of the mobile video audience may be slipping; presenting the risk that mobile video could become biased to certain target demographics, much the way traditional television has. Academics, analysts and, not surprisingly, boomer advocacy groups, believe that television programmers continue to overlook this growing segment of viewers.
Targeting new segments
That purported failure is not a coincidence. In television, it’s about the advertisers. TV programmers build schedules that reach the targets advertisers want to reach. But advertisers, as a whole, have been historically reluctant to target the AARP
crowd. Operators and video service providers won’t have that luxury. Those working in mobile video can’t afford to focus only the advertisers’ preferred demos: We need the attention of boomers.
Growing group with disposable income
For the wireless industry, mobile media is about engaging a critical audience not just for advertisers but for operators. Mobile video users 45 and over represent a growing audience of decision makers-at the home and in the office. What’s more, they are a subscriber segment with appealing levels of disposable income for things such as wireless data plans. To attract and retain boomers as high-revenue subscribers, operators and video service providers need to construct a content offering that engages an audience other media may occasionally overlook.
ARPU, not just advertising
This won’t be an easy challenge. The go-to content partners for mobile video (traditional television networks) are used to programming predominately with advertising dollars in mind, not ARPU (average revenue per user). Accordingly, programming options targeted at boomers are few and far between, leaving no obvious pool of content from which to draw. Hence, the onus will be upon operators and video service providers to work selectively and with a diverse enough array of content providers to develop an overall offering that appeals beyond traditional advertising targets.
More broadly speaking, increased efforts to understand the diverse video preferences of the mobile video audience (which, like TV, is not one-video-fits-all), and to dynamically create content offerings for targeted segments, will drive successes beyond mobile video adoption and into ARPU and subscriber acquisition.
Asked of what types of video content they would be interested in seeing in the future, boomer mobile video users have shared interest with their younger peers: Comedy was the most popular program-type by future interest among all mobile video users and also among just those 45 and older. At the same time, mobile video users 45 and older are more likely than the overall mobile video base to be interested in news, weather and full-length cinema released movies over their phone.
We can also get a better sense of how to program for boomer mobile video users by looking at their traditional television viewing. Nielsen recently began reporting viewing by wireless market breaks through a service called Mobile Vector. Looking at data from the second quarter of this year, we see that mobile video users 45 and older over-indexed on viewing of networks such as VH1, Bravo and the Lifetime Movie Network.
When it comes to in-home TV viewing, boomer mobile video users have unique genre preferences as well. Compared with all mobile video users, mobile video users 45-54 show an above-average affinity for western drama, sports news, adventure, detective and daytime drama types of programs.
Boomer mobile video users are ready for more video options that meet their unique programming interests. Forty-eight percent of mobile video users 45-54 said a wider variety of television and video programs would increase their mobile video consumption, to say nothing of the boomer audience not yet reached by the platform. Moreover, an overwhelming majority (59%) of 45- to 54-year-old users said they would watch more if there were a wider variety of channels overall. Operators and video service providers who look beyond traditional advertiser demos and work overtime to catch the attention of this valuable segment will benefit immensely from that engagement.
Jeff Herrmann is vice president of Mobile Media Segment, Telephia. Telephia, a service of The Nielsen Company, provides syndicated consumer research to the telecom and mobile media markets. The research above is based on findings from the Telephia Mobile Video Report for Q2 2007 and the Nielsen Mobile Vector service. You may contact Jeff directly at jeff.herrmann@nielsen.com. You may contact RCR Wireless News at rcrwebhelp@crain.com.
