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Late last month, Adweek published a roundup of television's "winners" in attracting 18-49s in 2016. As noted, NBC "won" with an average 18-49 demo rating of 2.2 for the full year, while among cable networks, ESPN came in tops in primetime and Adult Swim stayed on top in total day ratings. As for individual series. The Walking Dead was far and away the top show, with 11.3 million 18-49-year-old viewers, followed a distant second by NBC's Sunday Night Football, with 8.7 million 18-49s.
This information, while making for a nice year-end article, really got us thinking: why does this even matter? First of all, despite being a "winning" network or TV series, none of the rating or audience counts were impressive, reflecting the ongoing erosion of linear TV in general. Essentially, they were the winners of a slowly losing medium—or to put it more favorably, a medium in transition. Secondly, and as we've pointed out many, many times, the 18-49-year-old demographic is so broad that it can hardly be considered "targeting" in any practical sense; the TV and brand preferences, not to mention lifestyles and interests of a 20-something and a 40-something have little in common.
So if this is the case, how does the 18-49 age break remain one of the gold standards (25-54 is the other) in both rating reporting and media buying? Ultimately, the fact of the matter is that buying and selling using the 18-49 demo has benefits both for the brands/agencies and the networks. On the brand/agency side, buys are often made on a corporate basis, and include a stable of products and services that, overall, cannot fit into more narrowly focused demos like 18-34. Therefore although it's not the most effective from a targeting viewpoint, it does cover the bases. On the network side, in the early days it was claimed that Nielsen's small sample sizes did not allow for slicing and dicing of audiences in a reliable manner, particularly in verifying that advertisers were, indeed getting what they paid for. Although this is no longer the case, the networks can guarantee delivery of such a broad-based demo with fewer make-goods.
So despite the interest in—and ability to target—finer breaks, or to use other criteria to target viewers, it's beneficial on both sides to use 18-49s as the key demographic target for ratings and buys.
And it's not just for traditional "linear" TV. As reported in a recent study by Videology, a majority of agency advertisers (67%) and brand marketers (55%) cited demographic targeting as a method they regularly use "to reach consumers on digital video advertising campaigns."Moreover, 67% agreed that, "as more TV content is viewed on digital channels, age and gender demo targeting and delivery will remain a key metric for evaluating cross-screen campaigns." Although digital channels allow for finer demographic targeting, integrating it with traditional "linear" TV will surely involve the use of the 18-49 break for consistency purposes, so it's not going anywhere anytime soon, folks.