Like Baby Boomers and Millennials bookending their generation, Gen Xers are watching less network TV and more digital video. But what those born between 1965 and 1979 are watching is markedly different than their younger and older counterparts, and critical for marketers and advertisers to know.
Data gathered by Statista, an online statistics, market research and business intelligence portal, shows that in 2018, 58.8 million adult Gen Xers watched traditional TV on a monthly basis, compared to 60.2 million a year earlier. Those numbers are expected to decline further as digital video consumption continues to grow.
Using YouTube as a model, the product review platform Influenster polled some 8,500 GenX users about their video content preferences and habits. It found that of the three generations, Gen Xers were the least active on YouTube. Thirty-five percent of those polled said they watched YouTube videos daily, 31 percent watched several times a week, and 22 percent watched several times a month.
But out of a current population of 65.8 million Gen Xers, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, that represents a powerful contingent of YouTube viewers!
More revealingly, the Influenser poll found, members of this middle generation are turning to videos to be educated, as evidenced by 71 percent saying they watch how-to videos and 64 percent product reviews.
Whether via video platforms or on social media like Facebook or Instagam, Gen Xers’s are most attracted to OTT (over-the-top) content streamed directly to viewers over the internet and, according to eMarketer, to nostalgia–anything that pays homage to the ‘80s and ‘90s of their youth.