After years of prioritizing younger consumers, the television business needs to take a new look at how mature viewers are depicted on TV, especially in advertising, according to research being conducted by A+E Networks.
Older consumers are the fastest growing segment of the market and yet very few mature people are shown in a positive light in advertising–and those mature viewers don’t like it.
That could turn out to be bad for business if it turns off some of linear TV’s most loyal viewers and prevents the consumers with the most spending power from engaging with new products.
Also: A+E Pitch to Upfront Buyers: Count Older Viewers Too
A+E Networks has been doing a multi-stage research project looking at the way mature adults are being depicted in advertising, how they are reacting to the current state of affairs and how they would prefer to be represented in the future. The research includes working with cultural anthropologists and sociologists who spent time with adults 40 plus, reviewing thousands of TV commercials, and doing quantitative studies to back up the findings
TV is reflecting and reinforcing an ageist culture at a time when diversity and inclusion is being encouraged for other segments of the population, said Marcella Tabares, senior VP, strategic & cultural insights, ad sales research at A+E Networks.
“Embedded in our understanding of aging in America is a deeply anti-aging narrative,” Tabares said. ”Our ageist culture has created this sense of disgust with the idea of showing aging skin and aging bodies. We’ve stood up this idea that youth is all things good, vitality, innovation, creativity, strength, vigor, and in opposition to all the things that are associated with aging. But that’s not the reality. This is a social construct. It’s essentially a social myth and it’s getting worn out.”
Chronological age doesn’t tell you everything about a person. They said ‘this is not who I am,” and 90% said they felt there is no shame in growing older. The want to be seen as enjoying life, healthy, sexy, relevant and competent, the research found.
Change is needed. “It’s not only a moral imperative, but it’s a social and business imperative to deconstruct that paradigm and really understand what aging in America looks like and to have a different perception of older adults,” she said.
From a business point of view there are over 100 million adults aged 50 and up in the U.S. That group grew by 24% from 2010 to 2020 and is expected to grow another 12% over the next decade, according to projections from the Census Bureau. In comparison the number of 18 to 49 year olds is expected to grow just 5% and the number of 18 to 24 year olds will barely increase 1%.
Those 50-plus mature adults watch TV–about 50 million of them any given night in prime, compared to only 6 million in the 18 to 34 year old bracket and 12 million 35 to 49 year olds. Erosion from cord cutting and streaming has been minimal among older viewers compared to younger ones.
“There’s this huge population and they love television and media, but what we’re finding in the data is that they are appallingly under-represented in advertising,” Tabares said. In the research only 5% said they regularly see people who look like them in TV spots,
A+E worked with research company MarketCast, which used artificial intelligence to look at the faces in 20,000 commercials to see how visible 50-plus people are in advertising. It found that 90% of the faces were under 50 in the ads. Mature adults represented less than 10% of the faces in ads for cosmetics and hygiene, autos, food and beverage, retail, travel, restaurants, entertainment, electronics and technology.
A+E took 25 of the ads to see specifically how mature viewers reacted to them. In many of them, the older people were represented as stereotypes in ads for health, medicine in financial services. In other ads the older characters were so vigorous, it alienated mature viewers who felt what they were seeing was unattainable and that they’d somehow failed at aging, Tabares said.
Because they don’t see themselves, mature viewers said they feel that advertisers don’t care about them. "They also feel overlooked and undervalued,” she said.
At the same time, according to a 2020 Consumer Expenditure Survey, adults 50 plus control 52% of annual expenditures or about $4.2 trillion dollars. They account for more than half the consumer spending in categories including retail, home improvement, wireless, jewelry, health clubs, airlines and dining. “You never see them in ads for health clubs,” she said.
Also: A+E Seeks Ways to Connect With Older Consumers
Some of this is happening because marketers are operating under myths. One myth is that older consumers are set in their ways and are already brand loyal. A+E’s research found that mature consumers said they tried three new products in the last three months and said that felt exciting and adventurous.
Another myth is that mature people want to see younger versions of themselves. But the research found that 73% of mature consumers said they want to see people who are aging and look their age, compared to 13% who said they preferred to see people younger than them in ads.
Linear television networks have been pushing to get advertisers to deemphasize buying commercials based on the 18 to 49 year old demographic, which renders half their audiences unsalable. Before the last upfront A+E, whose viewers’ media age is above 55. In last year’s upfront, A+E aimed to convince some of its advertisers to buy ads based on total audiences–including older viewers..
A+E will be presenting its research to the Association of National Advertisers in March and it will be hosting a Marketer Summit in Atlanta for advertising clients, where the research will be shared.
A+E’s branded content team will also be guided by the findings of the research as it creates integrations and other executions for clients.
“Media acts as a mirror and a projector of culture,” Tabares said. “We have powerful platforms. Media and advertising can play a very positive role in creating the more realistic, more inclusive picture of aging.”■
