A+E Networks has research that shows people in the 55-plus age bracket buy lots of stuff and it plans to study how to help advertisers get them to buy even more.

In its upcoming pitch before the upfront, A+E is telling media buyers it wants to sell commercials based on total audience. That means instead of basing ad prices on the number of people in the young-skewing demographic groups of people 18 to 49 or 25 to 54, it wants to count its viewers who are 55 and older.

Also Read: A+E Pitch to Upfront Buyers: Count Older Viewers Too

Those more senior viewers watch TV, see commercials and buy the products advertised. But reaching those viewers is essential free when the ads are bought based on younger demographics.

The practice stems from the notion that younger viewers are more important to reach. They stay consumers longer, the theory went, and older customers are already too set in their ways to be influenced by a 30-second spot.

Also Read: A+E Networks Leans Into Linear

Poppycock, said research done by A+E to back up the upfront pitch. In many cases, the data shows, older consumers have more money to spend and are more likely to respond to commercials they’re exposed to by buying the product advertised. 

And that’s without a concerted effort to reach older viewers or created advertising designed to appeal to them.

Now that A+E wants advertisers to pay for those older viewers, it plans to help its clients better appeal to them.

“We want to start focusing on how we are going to partner with marketers so they can really maximize the potential of the total audience market,” said Marcela Tabares, senior VP ad sales research at A+E.

When we think about the 55-plus group, they have been under-represented, undervalued and not communicated to directing because we have had a cultural obsession with the youth market,” she said. 

Tabares said that age should be treated like race and gender when it comes to unlocking cultural insights that enable more resonant messaging. “We’ve had conversations around diversity and inclusion and I feel that largely age has been left out of that conversation.”

Wave 2 of A+E’s research will study adults forty and up to see what makes them tick culturally and what type of images and messages they engage with.

“We are about to partner with cultural anthropologists and sociologists to develop a very extensive body of research to really investigate and understand what does it mean to be seen in media for that 40 plus group,” she said.

“There is a way to create greater resonance relevance and maximize that potential ROI whether it's in terms of how you place your media and how you tell your creative story,” Tabares said.

In commercials it will take more than just showing older folks being able bodied and being able to use a smartphone without looking like a buffoon, she added.

In Wave 1, A+E documented that the viewing and consuming habits of older people make them valuable audiences to target with advertising.

“They love TV,” said Tara Lantieri, senior director, primary research, ad sales, strategic insights at A+E. “Those audiences have been very stable. They’re watching everything. This group is not a monolithic group. They are very diverse in their interests. Even if you look at the top rated shows among 18 to 34 year olds, you’ll find that the 55-plus audience is two times or three times larger than that younger demographic."

A+E studied ad receptivity working with Phoenix Marketing International, which looked at a year’s worth of category-level data with about 20,000 ads from 1,600 advertisers. 

“We saw that brand memorability actually grows as viewers aged overall. It’s actually twice as high for adults 55 plus versus 18 to 34 year old,” Lantieri said. That pattern held for 48 of the 57 product categories PMI on which PMI reports.

Some of the better performing ads were multigenerational showing older characters with younger ones, often family member

Lantieri pointed to a particular ad for Jergens that featured the actress Leslie Mann and her real-life daughter.

“We saw this beautiful ad with humor and this multi-generational dynamic really connect and perform very well with this group,” she said. "It’s actually performed well with the other groups as well.”

Another ad that performed well was for Consumer Cellular that not only showed older consumers but Asian older adults and Hispanic adults. “It reflected the diversity that exists within age,” Lantieri noted. “The characters in the spot, they know what they’re doing on their cell phones. They use video calls, they use social media. So it’s reflective of the reality that being over 50 does not make you a technophobe.”

A+E also did two attribution studies, looking at the auto and consumer packaged goods industry.

In the CPG study, conducted by NCSolutions, 16 brands were looked at. After being exposed to advertising, all demographic groups studied shows increased sales. There was a 14% increase for the 18 to 34 age bracket, a 6% gain for 35 to 54 year olds and 12% for 55-plus.

Because there are more viewers aged 55 and up and then have more money to spend, the advertising impact generated more revenue for marketers than the other two marketers involved, said Aliza Wechsler, director of digital research at A+E.

In the auto study, conducted by 605 Impact, the likelihood that someone in a household exposed to an ad increased with age, with the 55 plus audience dominating. 

And in a precision campaign A+E ran that was specifically aimed at people in the market for a new car--as opposed to targeting by demographics--55 year olds were included in the audience being bought.

“Rather than using demos to exclude a large group of people that have this tremendous buying power, we focus on people’s behavior,” said David Ernst, VP, ad sales research. “Not only is it the right thing to do, it’s the smartest thing to do for an advertiser.”

 A+E Networks wants to make demos history in this upfront. 

Noting the continued erosion of younger viewers from traditional TV, the programmer said it intends to transact on total audience as its currency for the 2021-22 broadcast year.

Like last year, when the coronavirus forced programmers to cancel their in-person upfront presentations. A+E said it will conduct its upfront presentation for media buyers and clients virtually on March 3. The presentation will highlight programming on A&E Network, History and Lifetime.

Also Read: A+E Networks Leans Into Linear

Most ad deals are now based on demographic groups, mainly people, men or women 18 to 49 years old or 25 to 54 years old. In that arrangement advertisers pay for--and are guaranteed to reach--viewers under 54.

Those advertisers’ commercials are also seen by a huge number of viewers 55 and older--the biggest group of traditional TV viewers--but the advertisers get those eyeballs for free.

What A+E wants is to charge advertisers for all viewers 18 years and older as their primary currency. The programmer will also provide clients with secondary assurances based on demographic or more specific behavioral targets that more closely match potential buyers for their products or services..

Peter Olsen, president for advertising at A+E Networks, noted that people using television PUTs in the 18 to 54 age bracket have been eroding 9% per year for the last four years. “If you look at 18 plus, there’s only 3% erosion. You do the math and you realize that a great number of the audience remaining is in that 55-plus range.”

That 55-plus audience is taken for granted, “Olsen said. “This is a call for marketers to look at age in a similar inclusive way they look at age and gender.”

The way ad buyers focus on young viewers versus who actually buys an advertiser process has long been an issue among the TV networks. Legendary CBS research chief David Poltrack presented many studies showing that the network reached many people that bought its clients products and that many of them were 55 and older.

Also Read: CBS Says It Leads Nets in Consumers

“One of every three adults is 55 plus and it’s the fastest-growing demographic group,” said David Ernst, VP advanced television & digital analytics at A+E. “The have the most money by for of any demographic group and when you put together the size of this audience, the disposable income they have and the fact that they do respond to advertising, we think it’s really an untapped marketplace.”

Olsen acknowledged that some advertisers won’t want to give up reaching older consumers for free, but after a year in which advertisers demanded--and got--additional flexibility from their media partners as they worked their way through the pandemic, he was hopeful buyers and clients would be flexible as well regarding a shift to basing deals on 18 plus.

More importantly, advertisers who insist on buying linear TV risk getting squeezed out of a medium that works by other clients willing to pay more for commercials because they acknowledge the real number of people they reach and how much they buy.

“We’ve seen this continued accelerated influx of dollars from the direct to consumer marketers, and they view all of this differently,” Olsen noted.

"The DTC marketers don’t care about traditional guarantees. They’re just going to build businesses and their seeing television as an opportunity and they’re starting to steal share from some legacy clients,” Olsen said. “What we’re proposing is the legacy folks need to learn some lessons here.”

The good news for buyers shifting to basing buys on 18 plus, is that ad prices would go up more slowly. Olsen estimates that based on audience erosion in the demo and a likely pickup in the economy once more people get vaccinated, prices could be up 15% to 20% on a CPM basis--a number that wouldn’t be acceptable to most clients.

During the last upfront, A+E clients were provided pricing as if they had bought on 18 plus, and on the basis of 18 plus, the price increase would be a third as large.

“That would be a sustainable framework,” Olsen said. “What we’re saying is traditional television should be seen as a total audience play with frankly a skew towards the older audience.”

To reach younger viewers Olsen said advertisers can buy A+E digital platforms or shift to ad-supported streaming services.

Advertisers are also slowly but surely shifting toward buying data driven targeted commercials and addressable advertising, which also do not hinge on broad age and sex demographics, but instead focus on people likely to buy a car in the next three months, or high-income people likely to need a broker.

“Let’s try to create a framework that works versus keeping our heads in the sand and pretend we can keep negotiation all 18-49 linear only and think that we’re not going to have problems,” Olsen said.

Nielsen families in about 140 local TV markets won’t have to record their viewing habits in antiquated paper diaries beginning mid-next year, as the ratings measurement company hurtles into the 21st century and full electronic measurement.

Nielsen said that beginning in mid-2017 it will introduce full electronic measurement into its local television ratings service across all 210 designated market areas. The company will incorporate return path data from set-top boxes and other electronic measurement into local ratings, including the 140 smallest TV markets were paper diaries are used now. The company plans to fully phase out the paper diaries in early 2018.

Paper diaries have been sitting near Nielsen family television sets for more than 60 years, offering personal level insights into viewing habits and trends, which the market has transformed into billions of dollars in advertising over the years.

Related: Recalling the Fallibility of Nielsen's TV Diary

The move to full electronic service isn’t connected to the company’s Total Audience Measurement initiatives, but it allows the company to provide more consistent, stable and reliable measurement across all of its markets.

“By tapping into the strengths of return path data and electronic measurement, and combining it with Nielsen’s gold-standard panels and meters, we will be delivering a superior product to help all local clients address current challenges and better position for future trends,” said Nielsen product leadership president Megan Clarken in a statement.  “This enhancement is part of Nielsen’s commitment to invest in and transform how local TV is measured in a cross-platform world across all screens and devices.

Winds of change continued to blow through the TV business in the second quarter, with live TV viewing dropping as the number of homes with broadband only and those with streaming video subscriptions rose.

According to Nielsen’s second-quarter Total Audience report, the number of homes with pay-TV subscriptions—a crucial number for the industry—is down 1.2% to 100.4 million from 101.6 million a year ago. The number of broadband only homes rose 52% to 3.3 million from 2.2 million.

Media company stocks have been diving because investors are concerned that subscription revenues are threatened by cord cutters and skinny bundles. Top executives from media companies, including Philippe Dauman of Viacom, have mostly been downplaying the threat the decline poses.

Meanwhile, the share of homes with subscription video on demand rose 18% to 45% in the second quarter of 2015 from 38% in the second quarter a year ago. The number of homes with enabled smart TVs rose to 18% from 11%.

Read more at B&C.