Expert Asserts 18-34-year-old Audience is Shrinking

Before marketers design products and services for the youth market they might want to check out the latest demographics on this market sector. Nielsen Media has stood by its findings that the coveted young adult audience is shrinking by as much as 10% – yet the research company has offered no explanation for the demise.

According to Ken Gronbach, President and CEO of KGA Advertising of Middletown, CT the audience of Generation Xers is shrinking because there are 38% fewer of them than Baby Boomers.

"The media industry had better wake up to the fact that today’s number of young adults is tiny compared to the young adult population of ten years ago," Gronbach stated.

"This certainly is terrible news for broadcast companies, particularly the networks," he added. The decline of viewers in this age group means loss of millions of dollars to broadcast media.

Beginning in 1991, Nielsen has reported a continuous decrease in 18-34 year-old viewers, a fact that broadcasters deny. The Nielsen numbers, however, are consistent with census records, which also indicate a decrease in population for the same age group. "The explanation of the drop-off is really very simple," Gronbach stated.

"There are 80 million Boomers and 50 million GenXers. This means we are missing 30 million consuming young adults. Yet for some reason no one is drawing the correlation between census figures and the effects on industries targeted to young adults."

According to a comprehensive US population demographic study commissioned by KGA Advertising, businesses that continue to view the 18-34-year-old market as a consumer stronghold better revise their marketing strategies immediately or succumb to severe atrophy. The broadcast media is just one industry that is feeling the effects of this ebb in the population. "Chrysler is another good example of a company caught unaware," Gronbach stated. "It advertised the Neon to GenXers – but there wasn’t enough of the population to support their marketing efforts, no matter how creative they were."

Levi is another company that miscalculated its market. The jean manufacturer successfully captured the Boomer young adult market in the 80s. As Boomers moved on to their middle years, the company continued to market to the younger market; but by the 90s, young adults had reduced dramatically in population and the company’s bottom line fell out.

"Like the media industry, most marketers project their sales figures on past records," Gronbach said. "They fail to take into consideration whether the bodies are there to purchase goods at the same rate."