How Marketing to Children Has Changed with New Viewership Trends

Children today spend more time viewing content than children who grew up in the early 90s. Today, children have the capability to view multiple screens and have an array of channels to choose from. They can choose which content to view and at what time. How the toy and gaming industry use these trends to grow brand and sales revenue will reveal the true winners in industries that each produce more than 20 billion dollars in revenue.

Just how big is each industry? The toy industry itself is a 20.4 billion dollar generator, growing 5% in 2016 according to NPC(Market Research). The Video Gaming industry is expected to reach 23.5 billion, just in the U.S. by the end of 2017. As you can see, both markets are full of opportunities, but learning how to reach the customer in a changing customer journey will become the best tool for success.

The Connected Kids Report, has collected data from 1995 to 2015, in order to create a comprehensive picture of media habits on boys and girls between the ages of 5-16.

Children are watching significantly more hours of content, especially with the older group of boys and girls in their teenage years. Teenage boys in particular spend the longest amount of time watching content, averaging 8 hours. In contrast, 8 year old girls averaged the least at 3.5 hours.

The biggest trend change comes from multi-screening and on demand services. Children in the 90s were connected to the media by magazines and television. This new generation is connected through different devices (mobile, tablet, and game consoles).

Multi-Screening: As children receive mobile devices at a younger age, it should comes as no surprise that they’ve learned to manage multiple screens. 60% of watch time comes from mobile device. However, this is only one device that can be streaming content simultaneously with other viewing platforms. It’s important to note that some screen time will be concurrent.

On Demand Services: Most children between the ages of 5-16 years of age will watch television via catch up services and YouTube. YouTube is the most popular on demand service with more than 1/2 of respondents accessing TV and video via the site since 2013. According to Google’s I/O 2017, nearly 1 billion people come to YouTube to watch videos every month. The YouTube app. is available on more than 1/2 billion smart TVs, game consoles, and streaming devices. On Demand TV viewing has significantly grown from 2015. In particular within the age group of 13- 19 year olds.