Nielsen Audience Report Focuses On Millennials

New Report

NIELSEN has released its Q4 2015 Total Audience Report. This version of the Total Audience Report looks closely at an often discussed demographic group: Millennials.

While 18-34-year-old consumers have been the topic of a lot of media focus, NIELSEN’s research makes the crucial distinction that millennials are not a monolithic assemblage with a common set of media behavior. In fact, U.S. adults 18-34 are, within that demographic, in a state of rapid transition, moving from a parent’s home to the workforce to their own homes to starting a family with children.

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For all three groups, Top 40 radio is the number one format, but millennials in different life stages show preferences for different formats. Dependent Adult millennials are affected by exposure to listening by older adults – they overindex for Classic Rock, Classic Hits and Urban Adult Contemporary. Millennials on their own are the least ethnically diverse group, and show a preference for mainstream formats such as Hot AC and Alternative.

In addition, they listen to sports stations more than the other two millennial groups (they also watch the most sports on TV). Millennials starting a Family include the highest percent of Hispanic and Spanish-speaking listeners. In this group, Mexican Regional has the third-highest share of listening time. Overall, 16% of this group's listening goes to Spanish language formats – more than triple the amount of the on their own group.

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Other key report highlights:

• Home Alone? The NIELSEN study found that 97% of 18-year olds live in someone else’s home, primarily with parent or parents. Conversely, 90% of 34-year olds live in their own home and 60% of this particular age demo do so with children. 
• Connecting ... differently. On Their Own Millennials are also more likely than any other millennial group to have multimedia devices, Broadband Internet and laptop PCs. Starting A Family Millennials, however, are more likely to own DVRs (47%), DVD players (69%) and tablets (65%), the latter perhaps predicated on the presence of children in the home rather than income level.
• Speaking about Cable Subs (sort of). Millennials who are starting a family have greater multichannel penetration than the On Their Own group (79% vs 72%) and otherwise are more likely to have a working antenna (14% vs 12%). They also spend the most time at home of the three life stage groups. These factors mean that the Starting a Family group watches the most live TV (3 hours and 16 minutes per day) and make the greatest total use of TV screen (4 hours and 40 minutes).

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