Does YouTube Have a Kids Problem?

How much is its TV growth driven by (very) young viewers?

YouTube’s ascension in TV has been one of thee stories of the year in 2024. In fact, this week, the Google-owned platform jumped again in Nielsen’s Gauge rankings - accounting for 10.4% of all TV viewing in July.

But, here’s a question that perhaps hovers over this impressive growth - just how much of YouTube’s CTV audience is made up of kids?

Well, according to Nielsen, a full 20% of YouTube’s TV audience consumption is comprised up of kids 2-11. Throw in teens, and a full 28.4% of YouTube’s CTV audience is under 18.

As you can see, the proportion of kids watching YouTube vs. “all of TV” is much higher, per Nielsen (July 2024).

That said, according to TVision - which specializes in tracking TV usage and attention via a far different methodology and panel size - 87% of YouTube’s TV audience is above the age of 18.

(To be clear - in either case, we are just talking about the audience for YouTube on television - not mobile phones, tablets, etc.)

Regardless, it’s hardly shocking that YouTube would skew young. The platform serves a primary entertainment platform for several generations of young people, so it’s expected that these folks would be the ones driving YouTube app downloads and usage on smart TVs.

—sponsor—

Anyhow, why would reaching a lot of kids be a bad thing? It depends on what YouTube’s advertisers know, want, and agree to buy.

Talk to ad buyers, and some don’t always feel like they have a full accounting of where their YouTube ad dollars are running. I asked several about the proportion of kids on YouTube, and they said they didn’t know - and have asked the question before.

• Some wonder if some of the longer viewing times seen on YouTube is because kids are driving a disproportionate amount of YouTube viewing

• On the other hand, brands can and do target customers using initiatives like YouTube Select and other tactics, ostensibly to reach specific adult audiences. So even if kids are driving up the Gauge numbers (theoretically) it doesn’t mean that brands are necessarily reaching kids

• Some big TV advertisers also run lots of ads through YouTube through other media companies, such as buying Saturday Night Live or Jimmy Fallon clips through NBCU, or music videos via Vevo - and those vehicles are mostly likely reaching adults, primarily.

To be sure, delivering a big kids audience can be a terrific business - ask Nickelodeon in the 1990s, or the broadcast networks pumping out Saturday Morning Cartoons in the 1970s.

Still, the kids advertiser market is limited -and not what it used to be. For sure, many to kids brands - the Legos and the Mattels - have shifted their media strategies away from TV to YouTube, the YouTube Kids app, as well as toward creators.

The thing is, kids media dollars are only going to take YouTube so far in its quest to capture a meaningful portion of TV budgets. Same goes for teens - who are super influential for many purchase decisions, yet only important to a select group of advertisers as a primary target since they don’t have jobs, credit cards, etc.

Consider that this year’s TV upfront take, while down, landed at $9.34 billion, per Variety. Back in 2016, the kids upfront was pegged at $800 million. I struggled to find a more recent number, as nobody even writes about this stuff anymore, which probably says alot.

For the YouTube-takes-over-TV story to have the profound impact on the ad business that we’ve ascribed to it, the platform’s growth has to bigger than kids.

And it is! - at least according to Nielsen data. For instance, a full 21.1% of YouTube on CTV is 18-34 per Nielsen - that’s a very desirable demo to many brands.

In addition, here’s something that is very revealing from Nielsen - data on how much YouTube commands of a person’s total TV time would seem to indicate just how central it is to their media diet.
Not surprisingly, it’s way bigger the younger you are:

Age Group,Area of Total TV Usage (%)

P2+,10.4

P2-11 24.0

P12-17 19.9

P18-24 18.8

P25-34 13.3

P35-49 11.1

P50-64 8.2

P65+ 4.3

So, it seems clear that the younger you are, the more that YouTube commands your media (and ad) time. Clearly, Google would much rather be in this position, where its audience may be a tad on the young side, then say the cable news business, where 70 is the new 30.

It’s just that those eye-popping Gauge numbers may not perfectly correlate with the potential ad opportunity for YouTube in the CTV market. It’s hard to know.

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I am most likely not going to run any newsletters next week (we’ll see). So see you after Labor Day. In the meantime, please check out this latest episode of my podcast, featuring GoPuff SVP of Business Daniel Folkman talking about why Retail Media has to eventually consolidate. And if you’re interested in a podcast sponsorship in Q4, please reach out to mike@shieldsstrategic.com.