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Is your digital strategy optimized for Gen Z young adults?

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Is your digital strategy optimized for Gen Z young adults?

When you think of young adults, do you picture a crowd of Millennials whiplashing between FOMO and YOLO? Then it’s time to update that mental image! Today’s young adults are members of Gen Z – the generation coming up behind Millennials. And, as such, they have a different set of behaviors, attitudes and expectations for brands than the YOLO crowd did. Digital marketers must revise their assumptions around today’s young adults if they hope to successfully acquire and retain this important cohort of customers.

Today’s Gen Z young adults differ from Millennials at the same age in three key ways: Gen Z is more diverse; Gen Z’s social media time and attention is distributed across different and more platforms; and Gen Z expects a lot more from brands.

Gen Z is more diverse

It is well known that the U.S. is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse. What is less well understood is how much more diverse Gen Z young adults are compared to Millennial young adults (see below). Gen Z is more diverse in three ways: 

  1. First and most obviously, they are less likely to identify as white. Only a plurality, and not a majority, of Gen Z do so. 
  2. Fifteen percent of Gen Z – nearly twice as many as older generations – use more than one racial or ethnic category to describe themselves. So, at the individual level, they are more likely to embody diversity than previous generations of young people.
  3. Gen Z young adults are more gender-diverse than previous generations. And they are more likely to embrace gender fluidity in their peers. According to Pew Research, more than half of 18-29 year-olds know someone who is transgender (versus only 44 percent of 30 to 49 year-olds). And 56 percent of 18-29 year-olds say that whether someone is a man or a woman can be different from sex assigned at birth (versus only 32 percent of 30 to 49 year-olds).

Diversity Breakout of U.S. Consumers: Gen Z vs. Millennials

Source: Gartner Consumer Values and Lifestyle Survey, October 2021

What this means for digital marketers: Diverse and inclusive imagery and themes are important ways to demonstrate your brand’s core values to a wide audience. But they are even more critical as tools for resonating specifically with today’s young adults who are much more likely to see themselves in such representation.

Gen Z’s attention is distributed across different and more platforms

A decade ago, when Millennials were young adults, 57 percent of 18 to 29 year-olds had accounts on more than one social media network, according to Pew Research. Today, 96% of Millennials are on more than one platform, according to recent Gartner research. That same Gartner study found that most of today’s 18- to 29-year-olds are on five or more platforms. In contrast, most of today’s 30- to 49-year-olds are on four or fewer platforms. 

Facebook was and still is the top social network for Millennials, according to Gartner surveys, but it’s a third-tier platform for Gen Z, garnering about as much participation as Snapchat and TikTok, but nowhere near their participation on YouTube. 

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Not only are Gen Z social media patterns different, but they also interact with brands on social differently. Gen Z users on mainstream social platforms are about as likely as Millennial users to follow brands. But Gen Z users are less likely than Millennials users to say they like seeing branded content on those platforms.  

That’s not a surprise when it comes to Facebook, famously seen as “uncool” by young people. But that’s also true for Gen Z users on Instagram and YouTube. In fact, it’s only on newer platforms like TikTok, which forces brands to become fluent in platform-specific functionality, where Gen Z outpaces Millennials in following brands and liking seeing branded content.

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Source: Gartner Consumer Advertising and Content Marketing Survey, April 2021

What this means for digital marketers: Connecting with Gen Z young adults online requires a multi-platform strategy that incorporates not just platform-specific functionality but also platform-specific tone and themes.

Gen Z expects a lot more from brands

Specifically, Gen Z is more likely than older groups to want brands to take stands and talk about issues. And they are more willing to put their money where their ideals are. According to Gartner research, today’s young adults are about as likely as older consumers to think brands engage in activism to sell their products and services. Nonetheless, Gen Z wants brands to do so anyway. And they are more likely than older consumers to want brands to be a part of solving key societal issues today.

Today’s Young Adults are Savvy Conscious Consumers

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Source: Gartner Consumer Values and Lifestyle Survey, October 2021

When it comes to brand activism, Gen Z believes in positive reinforcement. Gartner found that, while US consumers as a whole are about as likely to “buycott” (spend with a brand to support its activism) as they are to boycott (stop spending with a brand to protest its activism). Gen Z is more likely to “buycott” than they are to “boycott.” Nearly a quarter of Gen Z reported buycotting (versus a fifth of all U.S. consumers). But only 15% of Gen Z said they’d boycotted, versus 19% of all U.S. consumers. 

What this means for digital marketers: Social media content should focus on the issues and ideals that matter most to Gen Z. Your brand’s social activism story is a powerful way to engage them. 

Though Gen Z young adults are unique in many ways, they are still young adults. The life stage, whenever it is experienced, is marked by milestones and firsts – first job, first apartment, first serious romantic partner. Like their age peers 10, 20 or even 30 years ago, Gen Z young adults are making the transition into independence from having been under the care (and control) of parents and other adults. But they are not yet responsible for people other than themselves (i.e. they’re not yet parents). On these experiences, Gen Z is not unique.

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Yet the cultural, societal and technological conditions of today are significantly different than those of even a few years ago. That means digital marketers will have to update their assumptions about young adults if they hope to stay relevant.


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About The Author

Is your digital strategy optimized for Gen Z young adults

Kate Muhl is a VP Analyst in the Gartner Marketing practice, specializing in Cultural and Consumer Insights. She has been researching and advising on the consumer and U.S. culture for more than a decade.

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YouTube Ad Specs, Sizes, and Examples [2024 Update]

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YouTube Ad Specs, Sizes, and Examples

Introduction

With billions of users each month, YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and top website for video content. This makes it a great place for advertising. To succeed, advertisers need to follow the correct YouTube ad specifications. These rules help your ad reach more viewers, increasing the chance of gaining new customers and boosting brand awareness.

Types of YouTube Ads

Video Ads

  • Description: These play before, during, or after a YouTube video on computers or mobile devices.
  • Types:
    • In-stream ads: Can be skippable or non-skippable.
    • Bumper ads: Non-skippable, short ads that play before, during, or after a video.

Display Ads

  • Description: These appear in different spots on YouTube and usually use text or static images.
  • Note: YouTube does not support display image ads directly on its app, but these can be targeted to YouTube.com through Google Display Network (GDN).

Companion Banners

  • Description: Appears to the right of the YouTube player on desktop.
  • Requirement: Must be purchased alongside In-stream ads, Bumper ads, or In-feed ads.

In-feed Ads

  • Description: Resemble videos with images, headlines, and text. They link to a public or unlisted YouTube video.

Outstream Ads

  • Description: Mobile-only video ads that play outside of YouTube, on websites and apps within the Google video partner network.

Masthead Ads

  • Description: Premium, high-visibility banner ads displayed at the top of the YouTube homepage for both desktop and mobile users.

YouTube Ad Specs by Type

Skippable In-stream Video Ads

  • Placement: Before, during, or after a YouTube video.
  • Resolution:
    • Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
    • Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
    • Square: 1080 x 1080px
  • Aspect Ratio:
    • Horizontal: 16:9
    • Vertical: 9:16
    • Square: 1:1
  • Length:
    • Awareness: 15-20 seconds
    • Consideration: 2-3 minutes
    • Action: 15-20 seconds

Non-skippable In-stream Video Ads

  • Description: Must be watched completely before the main video.
  • Length: 15 seconds (or 20 seconds in certain markets).
  • Resolution:
    • Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
    • Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
    • Square: 1080 x 1080px
  • Aspect Ratio:
    • Horizontal: 16:9
    • Vertical: 9:16
    • Square: 1:1

Bumper Ads

  • Length: Maximum 6 seconds.
  • File Format: MP4, Quicktime, AVI, ASF, Windows Media, or MPEG.
  • Resolution:
    • Horizontal: 640 x 360px
    • Vertical: 480 x 360px

In-feed Ads

  • Description: Show alongside YouTube content, like search results or the Home feed.
  • Resolution:
    • Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
    • Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
    • Square: 1080 x 1080px
  • Aspect Ratio:
    • Horizontal: 16:9
    • Square: 1:1
  • Length:
    • Awareness: 15-20 seconds
    • Consideration: 2-3 minutes
  • Headline/Description:
    • Headline: Up to 2 lines, 40 characters per line
    • Description: Up to 2 lines, 35 characters per line

Display Ads

  • Description: Static images or animated media that appear on YouTube next to video suggestions, in search results, or on the homepage.
  • Image Size: 300×60 pixels.
  • File Type: GIF, JPG, PNG.
  • File Size: Max 150KB.
  • Max Animation Length: 30 seconds.

Outstream Ads

  • Description: Mobile-only video ads that appear on websites and apps within the Google video partner network, not on YouTube itself.
  • Logo Specs:
    • Square: 1:1 (200 x 200px).
    • File Type: JPG, GIF, PNG.
    • Max Size: 200KB.

Masthead Ads

  • Description: High-visibility ads at the top of the YouTube homepage.
  • Resolution: 1920 x 1080 or higher.
  • File Type: JPG or PNG (without transparency).

Conclusion

YouTube offers a variety of ad formats to reach audiences effectively in 2024. Whether you want to build brand awareness, drive conversions, or target specific demographics, YouTube provides a dynamic platform for your advertising needs. Always follow Google’s advertising policies and the technical ad specs to ensure your ads perform their best. Ready to start using YouTube ads? Contact us today to get started!

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Why We Are Always ‘Clicking to Buy’, According to Psychologists

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Why We Are Always 'Clicking to Buy', According to Psychologists

Amazon pillows.

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A deeper dive into data, personalization and Copilots

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A deeper dive into data, personalization and Copilots

Salesforce launched a collection of new, generative AI-related products at Connections in Chicago this week. They included new Einstein Copilots for marketers and merchants and Einstein Personalization.

To better understand, not only the potential impact of the new products, but the evolving Salesforce architecture, we sat down with Bobby Jania, CMO, Marketing Cloud.

Dig deeper: Salesforce piles on the Einstein Copilots

Salesforce’s evolving architecture

It’s hard to deny that Salesforce likes coming up with new names for platforms and products (what happened to Customer 360?) and this can sometimes make the observer wonder if something is brand new, or old but with a brand new name. In particular, what exactly is Einstein 1 and how is it related to Salesforce Data Cloud?

“Data Cloud is built on the Einstein 1 platform,” Jania explained. “The Einstein 1 platform is our entire Salesforce platform and that includes products like Sales Cloud, Service Cloud — that it includes the original idea of Salesforce not just being in the cloud, but being multi-tenancy.”

Data Cloud — not an acquisition, of course — was built natively on that platform. It was the first product built on Hyperforce, Salesforce’s new cloud infrastructure architecture. “Since Data Cloud was on what we now call the Einstein 1 platform from Day One, it has always natively connected to, and been able to read anything in Sales Cloud, Service Cloud [and so on]. On top of that, we can now bring in, not only structured but unstructured data.”

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That’s a significant progression from the position, several years ago, when Salesforce had stitched together a platform around various acquisitions (ExactTarget, for example) that didn’t necessarily talk to each other.

“At times, what we would do is have a kind of behind-the-scenes flow where data from one product could be moved into another product,” said Jania, “but in many of those cases the data would then be in both, whereas now the data is in Data Cloud. Tableau will run natively off Data Cloud; Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud — they’re all going to the same operational customer profile.” They’re not copying the data from Data Cloud, Jania confirmed.

Another thing to know is tit’s possible for Salesforce customers to import their own datasets into Data Cloud. “We wanted to create a federated data model,” said Jania. “If you’re using Snowflake, for example, we more or less virtually sit on your data lake. The value we add is that we will look at all your data and help you form these operational customer profiles.”

Let’s learn more about Einstein Copilot

“Copilot means that I have an assistant with me in the tool where I need to be working that contextually knows what I am trying to do and helps me at every step of the process,” Jania said.

For marketers, this might begin with a campaign brief developed with Copilot’s assistance, the identification of an audience based on the brief, and then the development of email or other content. “What’s really cool is the idea of Einstein Studio where our customers will create actions [for Copilot] that we hadn’t even thought about.”

Here’s a key insight (back to nomenclature). We reported on Copilot for markets, Copilot for merchants, Copilot for shoppers. It turns out, however, that there is just one Copilot, Einstein Copilot, and these are use cases. “There’s just one Copilot, we just add these for a little clarity; we’re going to talk about marketing use cases, about shoppers’ use cases. These are actions for the marketing use cases we built out of the box; you can build your own.”

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It’s surely going to take a little time for marketers to learn to work easily with Copilot. “There’s always time for adoption,” Jania agreed. “What is directly connected with this is, this is my ninth Connections and this one has the most hands-on training that I’ve seen since 2014 — and a lot of that is getting people using Data Cloud, using these tools rather than just being given a demo.”

What’s new about Einstein Personalization

Salesforce Einstein has been around since 2016 and many of the use cases seem to have involved personalization in various forms. What’s new?

“Einstein Personalization is a real-time decision engine and it’s going to choose next-best-action, next-best-offer. What is new is that it’s a service now that runs natively on top of Data Cloud.” A lot of real-time decision engines need their own set of data that might actually be a subset of data. “Einstein Personalization is going to look holistically at a customer and recommend a next-best-action that could be natively surfaced in Service Cloud, Sales Cloud or Marketing Cloud.”

Finally, trust

One feature of the presentations at Connections was the reassurance that, although public LLMs like ChatGPT could be selected for application to customer data, none of that data would be retained by the LLMs. Is this just a matter of written agreements? No, not just that, said Jania.

“In the Einstein Trust Layer, all of the data, when it connects to an LLM, runs through our gateway. If there was a prompt that had personally identifiable information — a credit card number, an email address — at a mimum, all that is stripped out. The LLMs do not store the output; we store the output for auditing back in Salesforce. Any output that comes back through our gateway is logged in our system; it runs through a toxicity model; and only at the end do we put PII data back into the answer. There are real pieces beyond a handshake that this data is safe.”

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