TV remains favoured medium of Oz kids

TV remains favoured medium of Oz kids
Rebecca Hawkes
| 26 July 2018


TV remains the top screen-time draw for Australia’s children, despite the rise of short-form video platforms according to Turner’s latest New Generations report.
Turner New Generations Viewing Behaviour
The report, which studied an age range of four to 14, found children in Australia are consuming more than two and a half hours of television and movies across all devices and platforms on a typical day. In addition, they spend 75 minutes on short-form video platforms.

Cartoons come out top in terms of their favourite content, followed by films and live action kids shows.

“Understanding the minds of the next generation of content consumers is never an easy task. The kids we spoke to are true digital natives who play by very different rules to us and this report has really thrown up some interesting data,” said David Webb, senior director of data & insights for Turner Asia Pacific.

“Never before have children had so many content and platform choices – but TV is still the major player for youngsters, and it’s also clear that they still love animation.”

Penetration of newer technology has increased amongst households with kids, with streaming devices (+124%), smartwatches (+69%) and virtual reality (VR) devices (+60%) having all seen large uplifts in ownership since the last survey in 2016.

Researchers found almost all households surveyed now have a smartphone, however children’s access to computing devices remains higher for tablets and computers.

Short-form video viewing was the most common online activity for kids on websites and apps at 73%.

Online viewing remains fragmented, but the five most popular YouTube channels were Dan TDM, Ryan’s Toys Reviews, Minecraft, Jake Paul and Hobby Kids TV.

Online games overtook school/homework in this year’s survey in terms of key online activities. Minecraft remained the favourite game for both boys and girls, with boys choosing the newer game Fortnite as their second favourite.

Only a quarter of kids aged 12 and under had used a social media platform in the last month. However, for the first time Instagram has overtaken Facebook in Turner’s New Generations survey, with nearly half using Instagram. Of these, 87% said they have their own account.

This year the report’s AdLab also looked at the effectiveness of advertising to kids. It analysed key effectiveness metrics such as ad likeability, brand recall and purchase intent within TV, short-form video platforms and website environments.

The data reveals that TV ads outperformed YouTube ads for key ad metrics when comparing the same creative, with results showing 43% higher spontaneous awareness, 21% higher brand recall, 7% higher ad likeability and a 13% change in purchase intent.

“What we saw was that purchase intent increased when an ad was shown on TV only, compared to YouTube only, but further increased when seen on both TV and You Tube. This information could provide brands with better information to plan their campaigns,” said Webb.

Content also played a key role in driving effectiveness with ads performing better on all key metrics when kids liked the surrounding content.