Streaming ads struggle to resonate with US teens – only 9% of teens find the best ads on streaming services compared to 27% on YouTube, according to a new report, “Precise Advertiser Report: Teens and Youth,” from Precise TV and Giraffe Insights. How can brands engage with teens? Denis Crushell, Precise TV’s COO, offers his insights.

What was the most surprising finding in the new report?

There are a lot of stats, every year that our reports uncover that are surprising. Whilst we always have an idea of the landscape of media consumption by teens, the percentages at which YouTube and some other platforms “beat” the competition is always the most surprising. We also carried insights this year into the fiercely competitive space of CTV audiences. We also found YouTube and Netflix are leading overall consumption with 43% market share, while YouTube by far has the largest ad addressable reach of any of the players. 

For example:

• YouTube was the most popular platform for teens consuming content recently at 77%, with mobile and app gaming hot on its heels garnering 64% which equals the juggernaut that is TikTok. Gaming is only trailing behind YouTube by 13%.  

• Teens are choosing to watch their favourite shows on Netflix (27%), YouTube (16%) over Disney+ (7%), Amazon Prime (7%), Hulu (10%) and Paramount+ (4%). 

  • With all the billions of dollars pumped in to creating original content on these platforms and even more capital spent on advertising them, they still can’t take eyeballs away from YouTube when it comes to Gen Z. 

What can brands do to engage teens via streaming ads?

There is a great opportunity for brands to engage with teens on streaming platforms. We see the largest ad addressable reach on YouTube over any other platforms. Brands need to lean into contextual targeting to effectively advertise to teenagers on the YouTube platform. Our report tells brands about the content and influencers, who teens are most passionate about. As an example, it’s no surprise but Mr Beast is the most popular influencer with 42% stating it’s their top channel, while Dude Perfect was at 20% and Good Mythical Morning at 12%. 

We feel it’s important brands not only learn where to advertise against these audiences, but how to create good enough ads, which teens are less likely to skip. We have helped several brands understand this with our How To Create A Great Skippable Playbook. 

• Be Direct – Make it clear what action the audience should take.  

How can media companies improve discovery among teens for their programming?

Media companies need to show up where the audiences are consuming this content. We’ve seen in our PARTY report that they spend the majority of their time on platforms such as YouTube, Mobile Gaming, TikTok, AVOD and CTV. What’s interesting from our research is the fact, there are large content areas within these platforms with the highest levels of consumption. For example on YouTube, the most consumed categories are Gaming (43%) and Music (36% of consumption). 

We’ve also seen teens enjoy discovering new relevant shows with YouTube advertising with 38% of teens saying they learn about new movies from YouTube and 74% saying they watch music videos on YouTube. These are prime content types for media companies to advertise to teens on. YouTube on the big screen is becoming more ingrained into people’s day life too. YouTube CTV absolutely needs to become part of a digital marketing strategy, alongside placing ads inside gaming apps, if they aren’t already doing this.