In today’s digital landscape, brands face the challenge of connecting with a young, digitally native audience. These kids are growing up with technology at their fingertips, empowering them to discover and engage with various platforms. Unlike previous generations, they watch, interact, and socialize differently, wielding significant influence within their family units.
As “in-home influencers,” these kids are forming brand loyalties from a young age, making it crucial for brands to nurture lifetime customers by developing authentic connections. However, it’s essential to acknowledge the vulnerability of this segment and prioritize their protection.
To effectively connect with this audience, brands must adapt to the following key changes in the market:
Video content: Kids have migrated from long-form to shorter-form, topic-based, and creator-based content on open user-generated platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and social media.
Time and attention: Children consume approximately five hours of media per day, with almost half of that time spent on interactive platforms. This shift from traditional media to on-demand services, gaming platforms, and social media requires brands to be more targeted in their approach.
Fragmentation: The media landscape has fragmented, with thousands of channels across multiple platforms and formats. Brands must navigate this complexity to meet kids where they are and maintain authenticity.
Recognizing individuality: Kids are not a homogeneous demographic; they have unique characteristics, tastes, and platform preferences. Savvy brands acknowledge and cater to these differences, just as they would with adult audiences.
Current content matching tools rely on vague keyword data, leading to media waste and ineffective ad placement. To address this, the brands will have to deep down into enriched metadata at the video level, enabling hyper-contextual matching and reducing waste. By combining human review with GenAI technology, we can categorize vast amounts of kid-friendly content across platforms, making it usable, efficient, and safe for marketers. This allows brands to discover more aligned content, optimize campaigns, and reach beyond top channels, increasing breadth and differentiation while reducing costs.
To succeed, brands should focus on:
Developing contextual content that aligns with kids’ various interests and lifestyles
Recognizing and respecting the individuality of each child
Prioritizing protection and safety in all interactions
Embracing the complexity of the digital landscape and adapting to changes in kid behavior and preferences
By adopting these strategies, brands can build meaningful connections with the young, digitally savvy audience and foster lifelong loyalty.
