Unruly / News / Millennial Men Most Emotional While Watching Video Ads

Millennial Men Most Emotional While Watching Video Ads

18-34 Males more likely to laugh or feel nostalgic, happy, angry or inspired than any other demographic, according to video ad tech company Unruly

NEW YORK, LONDON – September 3, 2015 – It’s a myth that women are more emotional than men. New research released by video ad tech company, Unruly, has found that young men are far more likely to feel intense emotional reactions to video content than any other demographic.

Millennial men have the highest emotional reaction in 14 of the 18 different psychological responses identified and measured by Unruly’s predictive tool, Unruly ShareRank™. Males aged 18-34 are not only more likely to get angry, sexually aroused and exhilarated while watching video ads than any other group, but also more likely to feel happy, fearful, nostalgic, proud and inspired.

The research highlights the importance for advertisers of engaging their target audiences emotionally. A study by Pringle & Field found ‘emotional campaigns outperform on almost every metric’ including profitability,  while recent research from Dr Karen-Nelson-Field, Director at the Centre for Digital Video Intelligence, has found that ads which elicit strong emotional reactions are twice as likely to be shared than those which elicit weak responses.

Unruly data also suggests around 70% of viewers who experienced an intense emotional response to an ad were very likely to buy the product.

The data is derived from Unruly Custom Audiences, a new programmatic targeting capability which delivers online video ads to the viewers most likely to have the strongest emotional response to that specific video.

Key findings include:

  • Males 18-34 are the most likely to feel Arousal (+102%), Anger (+39%), Fear (+38%), Contempt (+38%), Shock (+35%), Pride (+23%), Amazement (+18%), Exhilaration (+18%), Hilarity (+15%), Knowledge (+12%), Nostalgia (+11%), Inspiration (+9%), Happiness (+7%), Confusion (+7%) than the average US user;
  • Women 55+ are most likely to feel intense feelings of Warmth (12%), Sadness (11%) and Surprise (8%), while their male 55+ counterparts are most likely to feel Disgust (18%) at an ad’s content;
  • Women aged 18-24 were the least nostalgic of all the groups (14% lower than average);
  • The intensity of millennial men’s emotional reactions were on average 13% higher than that of millennial women;
  • Females 18-24 had the best brand recall of any group (+4% vs norm).

Unruly’s US President, Richard Kosinski, said: “Understanding how and why different viewers react to video content is so important for marketers. Consumers who are more emotionally engaged with a branded video are more likely to share the video, more likely to remember the brand, and most importantly, are more likely to buy the product. For marketers, this means more engagement, more earned media and, ultimately, more sales.”

Through Unruly’s platform, advertisers are able to target specific demographics, such as millennial males. According to comScore MMX, Jan. 2015, Unruly is able to reach 97.3% of the millennial male population in the US, compared 71.1% on YouTube and to 66.8% on Facebook’s platform. In addition to custom audience targeting, video player formats and functionality are also optimized through Unruly Custom Audiences to ensure the campaign maximizes viewer engagement and earned media. To learn more about Unruly Custom Audience capabilities, click here.

UNRULY, UNRULY SHARERANK and associated logos, designs and other marks are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Unruly Group Limited in the United Kingdom, the United States of America and elsewhere. Other trademarks are owned by their respective owners.

 

Methodology

Data is derived from Unruly Custom Audiences and Unruly ShareRank databases.

Unruly ShareRank™ allows advertisers to maximize the social impact of their video content by evaluating, improving and predicting the viral potential of video ads.  The Unruly ShareRank algorithm is trained using more than 395,000 viewer reactions to videos and sharing data relating to 2 trillion video views.

Unruly Custom Audiences uses paid media to target the consumers most likely to experience a strong emotional connection to a specific video.

 

About Unruly

Unruly is the ad tech company that gets videos watched, tracked and shared across the Open Web. Positioned at the intersect of video, social, native & mobile, Unruly uses emotional audience data and user-friendly video formats to massively increase viewer engagement, brand performance & publisher revenues. With 3 out of every 4 video views now taking place outside of YouTube, 84% of Ad Age 100 brands already trust Unruly to connect with audiences at speed and scale across the Open Web.

Differentiated by a unique data set of 2 trillion video views and powered by a full tech stack, Unruly adds value by algorithmically evaluating content shareability and programmatically targeting custom audiences. Viewability is 100% guaranteed to an audience of 1.36 billion monthly unique users across mobile, tablet and desktop devices. UnrulyX is the first supply side platform (SSP) for mobile video to offer scaled delivery of native ad formats and guarantee the viewability of premium video impressions bought via RTB.

Unruly employs 200 people across 15 offices, with regional HQs in London, New York and Singapore. Its super power is emotional ad tech. Its secret weapon is passionate people on a mission to #DeliverWow.