There is a ton of research about all the things that Mil­len­ni­als love and hate about online video. Why? Well, 18- to 34-year-old dig­i­tal natives are one of the most high­ly sought-after adver­tis­ing demos with glob­al spend­ing pow­ers of $2.45 tril­lion. So pro­fes­sion­al mar­keters need to learn how mil­len­ni­al audi­ences dif­fer in behav­ior and pref­er­ence from Gen Z, Gen X, and Baby Boomers.

Video Ads: 11 Things Millennials Love, Hate & Want

Let’s start with some new data by video ad tech com­pa­ny Unruly that found 11 things that Mil­len­ni­als love, hate, and want from video ads. The data is derived from two sources: Unruly’s Future Video Sur­vey, which sur­veyed 3,200 inter­net users from the U.S., UK, Ger­many, Aus­tralia, Swe­den, France, Indone­sia, and Japan; and Unruly Pulse, which is pow­ered by the company’s first-par­ty data on emo­tion­al adver­tis­ing. Unruly found:

1. Mil­len­ni­als are 112 per­cent more like­ly than the aver­age view­er to share the ads they like. Gen­er­at­ing a strong emo­tion­al response will dri­ve video shar­ing, so test your cre­ative ear­ly to learn which emo­tions rise to the top – and amp those up. Then apply emo­tion­al tar­get­ing to deliv­er your ads to view­ers who will love it most!
2. 93 per­cent of Mil­len­ni­als say they’re con­sid­er­ing ad block­ing soft­ware. Turned off by the del­uge of poor qual­i­ty ads in their feeds, Mil­len­ni­als are turn­ing to ad block­ers to clean up their online expe­ri­ences. Tar­get­ing these audi­ences with rel­e­vant ads in user-friend­ly play­ers is cru­cial.
3. 84 per­cent of Mil­len­ni­als reg­u­lar­ly mute video ads. But this doesn’t mean they’re not pay­ing atten­tion! Fol­low this shift in user behav­ior and cre­ate ads that grab view­ers with com­pelling visu­als. Also con­sid­er adding text or closed cap­tions to make your ad rel­e­vant with or with­out sound.
4. 74 per­cent of Mil­len­ni­als lose trust in a brand if an ad feels fake. Adver­tis­ers need to be self-aware and ensure their mes­sages match the brand’s core val­ues. Smart adver­tis­ers don’t make claims that demon­strat­ed behav­ior, prod­uct expe­ri­ence, and press cov­er­age can’t sup­port.
5. 74 per­cent of Mil­len­ni­als watch videos on their lap­top. Mil­len­ni­als love their mobile devices, but when it comes to watch­ing video, they’re even­ly split across desk­top and mobile. Use a mul­ti-device dis­tri­b­u­tion strat­e­gy when tar­get­ing Mil­len­ni­als to match their nat­ur­al view­ing behav­ior.
6. 63 per­cent of Mil­len­ni­als demand more con­trol over their video adver­tis­ing expe­ri­ences. No one tells a Mil­len­ni­al what to do! Use ad for­mats that let Mil­len­ni­als ini­ti­ate, min­i­mize, pause, mute, and close video ads. Nev­er force the view and use crys­tal clear dis­clo­sure. Col­lab­o­ra­tive adver­tis­ing is about trust, not trick­ery.
7. 59 per­cent of Mil­len­ni­als think there are too many ads. This ad shock is dri­ving Mil­len­ni­als to ad block. And 49 per­cent are also sick of being shown the same ad over and over and 43 per­cent are “creeped out” by ads that fol­low them around the inter­net.
8. Mil­len­ni­als are 27 per­cent more like­ly to feel hap­py and 25 per­cent more like­ly than the aver­age view­er to feel inspired by video ads. Gen­er­at­ing an emo­tion­al response is key to trig­ger­ing engage­ment, shar­ing, and pur­chase intent. If these make sense for your brand, you’re ahead of the curve!
9. Mil­len­ni­als are 23 per­cent more like­ly to enjoy rel­e­vant ads. Don’t assume all Mil­len­ni­als are the same. Use a mix of con­tex­tu­al, demo, psy­cho­graph­ic, and behav­ioral tar­get­ing to reach those most like­ly to find your ad use­ful and infor­ma­tive. Test­ing and tar­get­ing are key for this demo.
10. Mil­len­ni­al men are the most emo­tion­al demo when watch­ing video ads. They over index against 7 emo­tion­al respons­es, includ­ing hap­pi­ness, arousal, pride and inspi­ra­tion, exhil­a­ra­tion, amaze­ment, knowl­edge and shock.
11. Zeit­geist is the top rea­son mil­len­ni­als share videos. It gets Mil­len­ni­als shar­ing, so plan for water cool­er moments and use agile mar­ket­ing to hop on the trends that make sense for your brand through­out the year.

8 Media Habits of Millennials

For a report enti­tled, “Peren­ni­al Mil­len­ni­al: A Viral Phe­nom­e­non,” L.E.K. Con­sult­ing con­duct­ed online research of 1,308 Mil­len­ni­als (peo­ple aged 16 to 34 in 2015) and 685 Non-mil­len­ni­als liv­ing across the UK. The research took place in Sep­tem­ber 2015. L.E.K. ana­lyzed UK Mil­len­ni­als’ media habits across six life stages, from liv­ing at home with par­ents all the way through to start­ing their own fam­i­lies. Here are eight things that L.E.K found:

12. Mil­len­ni­als spend twice as much time as non-Mil­len­ni­als on new media, such as online video ser­vices (11 vs. 5 hours per week) and social media (7 vs. 3 hours per week). How­ev­er, tra­di­tion­al media such as TV, radio, and print rep­re­sents only 35 per­cent of total media con­sump­tion for Mil­len­ni­als vs. over 60 per­cent for non-Mil­len­ni­als.
13. New media con­sump­tion remains sig­nif­i­cant­ly above non-Mil­len­ni­als for all Mil­len­ni­al life stages, albeit time spent on social media and music stream­ing is high­est for ear­li­er life stage Mil­len­ni­als (at home and stu­dents). While Mil­len­ni­als’ use of tra­di­tion­al media is low­est for stu­dents and flat shar­ers, it remains sig­nif­i­cant­ly below non-Mil­len­ni­als even as they get their own place and have chil­dren.
14. Online video con­sump­tion in aggre­gate remains high across all mil­len­ni­al life stages. How­ev­er, the mix changes. The use of free online video ser­vices such as YouTube is low­er for Mil­len­ni­als with kids than ear­li­er life stage Mil­len­ni­als and their use of paid for online video ser­vices is high­er. How­ev­er, the con­sump­tion of tra­di­tion­al TV does not increase sig­nif­i­cant­ly for Mil­len­ni­als with fam­i­lies.
15. The impor­tance of alter­na­tive social media plat­forms dif­fers between mil­len­ni­al life stages. Music stream­ing and social media are more impor­tant for ear­li­er life stages. Face­book use is high across all life stages but the uptake of new­er plat­forms (e.g. Insta­gram and Snapchat) is sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er in the ear­li­er life stage seg­ments.
16. When asked which three media they would choose to take with them if strand­ed on a “desert island”, Mil­len­ni­als’ selec­tions are very dif­fer­ent to non-Mil­len­ni­als. The top three media for Mil­len­ni­als are social media, music, and sub­scrip­tion OTT video ser­vices while non-Mil­len­ni­als would pri­or­i­tize radio, free-to-air (FTA) and pay TV.
17. Both Mil­len­ni­als and non-Mil­len­ni­als are decreas­ing their use of tra­di­tion­al media and shift­ing con­sump­tion to new media. How­ev­er, a larg­er pro­por­tion of Mil­len­ni­als state they have reduced the use of tra­di­tion­al media, in par­tic­u­lar for tra­di­tion­al TV.
18. Mil­len­ni­als across all life stages have sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er adop­tion of online video sub­scrip­tion ser­vices: 38 per­cent for Mil­len­ni­als pre-fam­i­ly and 32 per­cent for Mil­len­ni­als with kids vs. 15 per­cent for non-Mil­len­ni­als. And 85 per­cent of Mil­len­ni­als with OTT have Net­flix, 30 per­cent have Ama­zon and 12 per­cent have NowTV.
19. The behav­ior of Mil­len­ni­als spreads to old­er gen­er­a­tions: from teenagers at home to their par­ents, wider fam­i­ly, and their net­works of friends. For exam­ple, adop­tion of sub­scrip­tion OTT by all non-Mil­len­ni­als is still below Mil­len­ni­als. But, uptake is sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er for non-Mil­len­ni­als with chil­dren at home com­pared to oth­er non-Mil­len­ni­als.

Millennial Video Consumption Behavior: 8 Findings

About a year ago, Ani­mo­to sur­veyed a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple of U.S. adult con­sumers to learn about their per­cep­tion and expe­ri­ences with video mar­ket­ing as a pro­mo­tion­al medi­um. The web-based sur­vey was field­ed Feb­ru­ary 9–11, 2015 with a sam­ple size of 1,051 (Mar­gin of error +/- 3.1 per­cent at a 95 per­cent con­fi­dence lev­el). So, what do the 80 mil­lion U.S. Mil­len­ni­als, who will spend more than $200 bil­lion annu­al­ly start­ing in 2017, and $10 tril­lion in their life­times, love and hate about online video? Here are eight more things that Ani­mo­to found about mil­len­ni­als:

20. 80 per­cent con­sid­er video con­tent when research­ing a pur­chase deci­sion.
21. 76 per­cent fol­low com­pa­nies on YouTube.
22. 70 per­cent are like­ly to watch a com­pa­ny video when shop­ping online.
23. 62 per­cent of U.S. mil­len­ni­als pre­fer to watch a video from a com­pa­ny instead of read­ing text.
24. 60 per­cent pre­fer to watch a com­pa­ny video over read­ing a com­pa­ny newslet­ter, but 53 per­cent are more like­ly to read a newslet­ter from a com­pa­ny if video is includ­ed.
25. More than half are like­ly to watch a video from a brand if they receive it in an email.
26. 48 per­cent only watch videos on their mobile device.
27. 45 per­cent pre­fer to watch video on their mobile device rather than on a lap­top or desk­top.

2 Examples of Online Video Millennials Love & Hate

What oth­er things do Mil­len­ni­als love and hate about online video? Well, mil­len­ni­als are YouTube’s core (although by no means only) audi­ence. So, take the fol­low­ing two exam­ples with a grain of salt.

28. The “Offi­cial Call of Duty: Infi­nite War­fare Reveal Trail­er” was pub­lished to YouTube on May 2. Although it has more than 16.4 mil­lion views, it also has over 1.6 mil­lion dis­likes, mak­ing it one of the most dis­liked YouTube videos ever.

29. On the oth­er hand, the “Bat­tle­field 1 Offi­cial Reveal Trail­er” was pub­lished to YouTube on May 6. It now has almost 23.4 mil­lion views and close to 1.3 mil­lion likes, mak­ing it one of the most liked YouTube videos of all time.

Now, 33 per­cent of “YouTube Gamers” are over 34 years old. That’s accord­ing to Google, which recent­ly part­nered with Ipsos Medi­aCT to sur­vey a total of 4,803 par­tic­i­pants in the U.S., ages 18–54, out of whom 2,802 go online at least month­ly (aka “Gen­er­al Online Pop­u­la­tion”) and 2,001 go online at least month­ly and stat­ed that they watch gam­ing videos on YouTube at least month­ly (aka “YouTube Gamers”).