TV mar­keters are miss­ing out on a huge oppor­tu­ni­ty to grow their audi­ences, accord­ing to video ad tech com­pa­ny Unruly. Why? Because the way TV net­works pro­mote their shows to new view­ers is miss­ing the mark with mil­len­ni­als across dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing chan­nels.

Accord­ing to new research from Unruly, 80 per­cent of mil­len­ni­als will tune into a TV show if some­one in their social net­work has shared a trail­er, a clip, or pro­mo with them online. This is com­pared to 66 per­cent of aver­age TV view­ers.

How­ev­er, the report also found that Mil­len­ni­als are 10 per­cent less like­ly to share TV pro­mo con­tent than the aver­age TV view­er, sug­gest­ing that TV mar­keters are fail­ing to cre­ate con­tent that res­onates with “dig­i­tal natives.” Fur­ther, Mil­len­ni­als in the US spend less time watch­ing TV than any oth­er demo­graph­ic accord­ing to Nielsen, show­ing that net­works are strug­gling to con­nect with this key audi­ence.

Senior mar­keters who believe in a strong cus­tomer-cen­tric focus and want to be vis­i­ble and per­sua­sive in the moments that real­ly mat­ter can learn some impor­tant lessons from Unruly’s free report, which can be down­load here.

“Audi­ence frag­men­ta­tion, ad avoid­ance and social dis­cov­ery are all pow­er­ful forces for dis­rup­tion,” said Unruly CEO Scott But­ton In a press release.

Oth­er find­ings from the report, which ana­lyzed 14,221 TV pro­mos, includ­ing show clips (stand­alone scenes from an episode that has already been aired), orig­i­nal pro­mos (new­ly filmed orig­i­nal con­tent), and trail­ers (a com­pi­la­tion of teas­er clips, usu­al­ly with voiceover and addi­tion­al edit­ing) from the “Big 5” U.S. net­works (ABC, CBS, CW, Fox, NBC) include:

• Rate of TV pro­mo shar­ing more close­ly cor­re­lates to Nielsen Rat­ings than num­ber of pro­mo views: The more shares a TV net­work gen­er­ates for its pro­mos, the more like­ly that will trans­late into rat­ings. The front run­ner, NBC, gen­er­at­ed 39 per­cent share of shares and a 33 per­cent of over­all Nielsen rat­ings;
• NBC is win­ning on social reach and engage­ment: NBC is lead­ing the way on social video, with 48 per­cent share of online pro­mo views and 39 per­cent of pro­mo shares. ABC fol­lows in both cat­e­gories with 27 per­cent of pro­mo views and 34 per­cent of pro­mo shares;
• Mil­len­ni­als are 39 per­cent more like­ly to watch online video con­tent on their smart­phones than the aver­age TV view­er and 14 per­cent more like­ly to watch TV on their lap­tops, while less than half (42 per­cent) still watch online video in the liv­ing room through con­nect­ed TVs;
• Orig­i­nal pro­mos are most viral type of TV pro­mo for U.S. audi­ences: While low-cost TV clips are the most preva­lent form of TV pro­mo­tion­al con­tent and rep­re­sent the major­i­ty of TV con­tent launched online, orig­i­nal pro­mos are actu­al­ly the most share­able form of pro­mo­tion­al con­tent, with an aver­age share rate of 3.9 per­cent, com­pared to the aver­age 2.1 per­cent of brand­ed con­tent;
• TV Net­works are miss­ing out on brand recall: All of the pro­mos test­ed in the Unruly TV Pro­mo and Mil­len­ni­al study – for the top rat­ed net­work shows – fell well below the U.S. mar­ket norm for brand recall from online videos (at only 75 per­cent).

• Jim­my Kim­mel Show cre­at­ed the most share­able TV pro­mo for a Mil­len­ni­al audi­ence. From July 2015 to Decem­ber 2014, the most intrin­si­cal­ly share­able piece of con­tent for mil­len­ni­als was the Jim­my Kim­mel Live clip “YouTube Chal­lenge — I Told My Kids I Ate All Their Hal­loween Can­dy 2014” with a Mil­len­ni­al Shar­eRank score of 7.6. This video was polar­iz­ing with the fun­ni­est trig­gers evok­ing shock and dis­gust among some mnil­len­ni­als.

“We’re see­ing a pro­mo para­dox — TV net­works are known for telling great sto­ries in their pro­gram­ming, but they’re not cre­at­ing engag­ing pro­mos to sup­port this great con­tent,” But­ton added. “Mil­len­ni­als are high­ly peer-influ­enced, with 80 per­cent cit­ing that they’d check out a show after receiv­ing a shared online TV pro­mo. Yet the pro­mos aren’t strong enough for Mil­len­ni­als to want to share.

What’s even worse: TV pro­mos aren’t pro­vid­ing view­ers with mem­o­rable expe­ri­ences.

“Of the videos we test­ed in our study, show recall fell well below the U.S. mar­ket norm for brand recall in tra­di­tion­al ads, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for even a moti­vat­ed mil­len­ni­al to remem­ber which show they want­ed to see,” But­ton said. “TV mar­keters need to start mak­ing pro­mos that res­onate with mil­len­ni­als and more heav­i­ly call out their shows if they want to change view­er habits and dri­ve new view­ers to tune in.”

But hav­ing strong con­tent is only half the bat­tle.

“You have to get your con­tent seen quick­ly,” But­ton said. “With near­ly half of a total video’s shares occur­ring in the first three days after launch, mar­keters have a very short win­dow with­in which to dri­ve TV tune-in. As mar­keters pre­pare for the 2015 Dig­i­tal Con­tent NewFronts, these prin­ci­ples can be applied to cre­ate engag­ing pro­mos to dri­ve traf­fic to both short form and long form con­tent.”

Why do you think TV mar­keters should do to engage mil­len­ni­als?