GenDigital

YT Cares Beta Launch

We are extremely excited to announce the beta launch of YT Cares. YT Cares is a disruptive innovation in the care packages space. With the help and support of various partners, our panelists created their own care package designs and then voted on their favorites. For far too long students and their parents have been getting ripped off and paying upwards of $60 or $70 for a package that really only costs about $15 to produce. It's time for a change.

YT Cares is not only cost efficient but charitable as well. The net proceeds of each package will be donated to a charity of the buyer's choosing. Unlike other recent product innovations we've launched, we're not looking for profits, rather just happy students and happy parents. None of this would be possible without all of the companies who provided the snacks, drinks and other goodies that went into the packages.

The beta version is live today at http://youth-trends.com/cares with six package combinations available. The launch theme is relieve the stress for finals so in addition to all of the snacks and drinks, each package includes stress balls, pocket games and other procrastinators.

Fall '09 Teen Internet Life

The latest wave of Teen Internet Life is now available. Teen Internet Life is one of the lead components from the semi-annual Teen Lifestyle deep dive which is based on interviews conducted with a nationally representative sample of teens ages 13 to 17. The Fall '09 wave is based on interviews completed the week of September 14th with a margin of error of +2/-2 percent.

Teen Internet Life is a comprehensive 30+ slide look at what teens are up to online whether it's social networking, video consumption or e-commerce. Online activity incidence is detailed by categories including news and entertainment, search and communications, music and video, social networking and community and academic endeavors. Two macro trends under consideration for the annual Macro Trends & Predictions report come to light with social gaming and mobile Internet access/usage showing huge gains. You can read more about the report here.

Fall TV Performance Check Up

Ok, so now that we're a few months into the new season, we recently executed a quick follow up with panelists in order to get a better read on the top performing new series. The most watched new fall series among male panelists to date is "NCIS: Los Angeles," which was the 4th rated series among male panelists in the Fall TV Preview Report. Following "NCIS: Los Angeles" was "FlashForward," which was the 3rd rated new series in the Fall TV Preview Report. Rounding out the top five most watched new TV shows among male panelists were "White Collar," "The Cleveland Show" and "Castle." Noticeably absent from the top five most watched new shows was "Bored To Death," which was the number one rated TV show among male panelists in the Fall TV Preview Report along with the NBC comedy "Community."

Among female panelists, the most watched new TV series by a wide margin is the ABC comedy "Modern Family." Following "Modern Family" was the new CBS comedy "Accidentally on Purpose," which just missed out on making the top five in the Fall TV Preview Report. The number one new show in the Fall TV Preview, "The Vampire Diaries" secured the third position, followed by two ABC series: "FlashForward" and "Cougar Town."

Most Watched New TV Shows:
(By Gender)

 

Males

1. NCIS: Los Angeles: 17% (CBS)

2. FlashForward:  14% (ABC)

3. White Collar:  13% (USA)

4. The Cleveland Show: 11% (FOX)

5. Castle: 8% (ABC)

 

Females

1. Modern Family: 27% (ABC)

2. Accidentally on Purpose: 18% (CBS)

3. The Vampire Diaries: 16% (The CW)

4. FlashForward: 13% (ABC)

5. Cougar Town: 11% (ABC)

The Relevance & Staying Power Of Twitter For Teens & College Kids

Lately, it's a rarity for a day to pass without someone asking us about Twitter and the youth market. The questions range from the straightforward and simple (do they use it?) to something more strategic in nature (how do I integrate Twitter into our social media marketing plans in a relevant way that will attract and engage our target audience?).

For starters, in terms of registrations, Twitter's growth among teens and college students has been impressive through the first nine months of the year. At the start of the year, only about 5% had registered for a Twitter account compared to 19% at the end of September. Of course, that's only one data point. The more impactful findings are things like frequency of access, frequency of updates and the number of people the individual is actively following. Basically, how sticky is the platform? From our perspective, these are the more meaningful metrics.

Frequency of Access:

- among the 19% with a Twitter account, only about a quarter (23%) have posted 5 or more updates during the past week and about one in five (19%) said they posted less than 5 updates since first registering an account

Followers & Following:

- teen and college student Twitter users have an average of 57 followers and they follow an average of 61 people, companies and brands

- the most commonly followed non-people are news & information centric: ESPN (net sub-brand mentions), CNN, Fox News, NY Times (net sub-brand mentions), Google (net sub-brand mentions) and Xbox (net sub-brand mentions)

- the most commonly followed "notable" people/personalities are the one's you'd expect them to be: Dave Matthews, Jason Mraz Taylor Swift, John Mayer, LeBron James and Dane Cook

- more than three in ten (32%) say they are at least somewhat interested in using Twitter more to follow updates from friends, brands/companies

So, what's the net here? Well, we think it's a fair assessment to say Twitter, at least among the teen/college segment is still pretty niche in terms of stickiness. It's not necessarily a bad move strategically to include Twitter as one element within a broader social media plan, but in that same breath, probably not the most pragmatic play to make it your sole element.

The updated and expanded  Q4 '09 Youth Social Media Marketing & Insights report will be available to download/purchase the week of November 23rd.

Teen Top Ten List Report: Q3 2009

The latest wave of Top Ten for the teen segment is now available via the Youth Trends Research Store. This wave of Top Ten covers the top TV shows, magazines, web destinations, musical artists, video game titles, movies, celebrities and clothing retailers. The Q3 '09 wave was completed the week of August 17th using a sample of 1,011 teens between the ages of 13 and 18. The final wave of the year for Top Ten will be conducted in the next two weeks.