Toluu

GenDigital

Daily news, analysis and commentary on teens and college students for advertising and marketing professionals

Holiday Shopping Preview & ForecastNovember 7

Hot off the digital presses, we have highlights from the just completed annual Holiday Shopping and Gift Wish List report. Interviews were wrapped up on Wednesday and we've been working diligently since then compiling results and analyzing the open-ended feedback.

From the looks of it, the holiday season (already well underway considering more than a third of participants said they already made at least one holiday-related purchase) won't be a total wash out as planned spending is down, but then again, when it comes to this audience segment, we're almost always use measurements and numbers going up every year, so if anything this is kind of like a cold water reality check that even young consumers can be affected by increasingly widespread economic crisis.

We're forecasting total holiday-related spending inclusive of gifts for parents, siblings, relatives, significant others and friends as well as the "me too" purchases (the holiday gifts they purchase for themselves) to come in at $592, a drop from $634 last year. Yes, it's down, but it's not like the roof caved in. Ironically, parents of teens/college students will be beneficiaries of the drop as th

At Long Last, Gossip Girl Ratings Match Quant Findings & Buzz FactorSeptember 17

Truth be told, we knew it would happen at some point, it was really more of a question of when not if. We saw the first indications last October that The CW was finally poised to have a hit in "Gossip Girl" yet all of the buzz and associated popularity ratings we tracked never ended up translating into proportional Nielsen ratings points. Last fall, 16% of teen and college females rated "Gossip Girl" one of their top five favorite TV programs. Based on historical comparisons, that perception rating would translate into a 2.1 to 2.2 Nielsen rating, yet as we saw throughout the 4th quarter of '07, GG never broke the 2.0 barrier.

Jump ahead to this spring and GG shot up to 24% and the third most popular TV program overall. Now we would think that the 26% would translate into a 2.6 to 2.8 Nielsen rating, yet again we never saw it break 2.2. So, what's the deal? Frankly we aren't totally sure, but clearly up until this week there seems to be some sort of disconnect between what the audience is telling us and what Nielsen is reporting. Finally, the tide has shifted. Nielsen came out ratings for GG with a season high 2.7 (all of this of course is among 18 to 34s) which is .4 points higher t

Latest Top Ten List Report HighlightsSeptember 10

  We just wrapped up the Q3 wave of the quarterly Top Ten List report. What we like best about the report is its overall simplicity in providing a pulse of what's top of mind right now. The categories covered in the wave included favorite TV shows, magazines, musical artists, movies and DVDs, celebrities, video and computer games, web sites, Olympic athletes and retailers. Starting with the guys, their favorite TV show of the moment is HBO's "Entourage." This marks the first time a premium channel secured the top position. Twenty-six percent of male respondents said Entourage was one of their three favorite TV shows compared to 16% in the Q2 wave and 9% in the Q1 wave. Needless to say, it's a pretty sweet growth trajectory for the HBO series since the start of the year and definitely bodes well for the remainder of the year as the new season gets underway. Following "Entourage" was "The Office" at 23%, up a point from the Q2 wave and two points from the Q1 wave. Coming in third was "Family Guy" at 21% down from 27% from the Q2 wave. The Q3 wave represents the first time in a year and half when "Family Guy" wasn't the number one TV show. Rounding out the

Fall Television Preview Report HighlightsAugust 5

We just wrapped up our fourth annual Fall Television Preview Report, one of our five seasonal trend report supplements. The annual supplement is based on a hybrid interview, one part quantitative and one qualitative with 950 members of the Youth Trends proprietary panel that are classified as heavy TV viewers, that is they watch at least 15 hours of TV per week. The first part of the interview enables participating panelists to stream trailers as well as read synopses of 23 new and returning TV series. After viewing each trailer and reading the corresponding synopsis, panelists rate the program against a series of attributes including planned viewing, general appeal and likelihood of live group viewing or appointment viewing as it is more commonly referred to as. The second part of the interview queries panelist habits and attitudes as it relates to TV viewing as we continue to evaluate important emerging topics like the impact of online streaming and the influence of TV advertising, among other topics addressed.

So, without further a due, the new TV series that received the strongest net perception ratings and planned viewing goes to "Fringe," which will a

Back To School Retail & Shopping Report Highlights: Part ThreeJuly 24

For the last post highlighting some of findings from the recently released Youth Trends Back To School Retail & Shopping Report, we'll focus on the financials as well as provide a re-cap of the methodology used to conduct the annual survey. First, in terms of methodology, the survey interviews for BTS Retail & Shopping '08 were completed online the week of July 7th using a nationally representative sample of 1,024 four-year, full-time college students between the ages of 18 and 24. Like the rest of our syndicated reports, our target sample composition is based on data from the National Center For Education Statistics. The reason why I bring this up is because a couple of other back to school survey results have hit the wires in recent days and several of their key findings are in conflict with ours. As an example, the National Retail Federation released their annual back to school survey findings earlier in the week and their outlook was quite a bit rosier than ours. Based on the results of the Youth Trends Back to School Retail & Shopping