Affinity for using technology increasingly important in success of Advertising.

Integrated Media Measurement Inc. (IMMI) released data showing that there is a rapidly growing subset of the population who are tech savvy regardless of their age. While it is important for advertisers to know the age of their target audience when planning a campaign, the study suggests that in order to effectively reach consumers advertisers must take into consideration consumers’ affinity for using and embracing technology.

“New technologies have caused the media landscape to become more fragmented than ever before,” said Amanda Welsh, vice president and head of research for Integrated Media Measurement Inc. “Just as advertisers use factors such as age, gender and annual income to target their campaigns, they must now start giving more consideration to their audiences’ predisposition toward using new technologies to consume content.”

Reviewing the platform choice to view primetime television content during the course of six months, IMMI data shows that age predicts behavior only among a subset of the population. For a key segment, tech adopters, age does not reliably correlate with their platform choice.

10.4 percent of Millenials in the study used all three technologies (live TV, DVR and online) to watch primetime programming during the course of a month; 9 percent of Baby Boomers in the study exhibited the same behavior. This statistically insignificant difference suggests that hardcore tech adopters – those who will use all forms of content delivery technology in a given month to watch primetime television programming – don’t vary their behavior as a function of age.

On the other hand, the less aggressive tech adopters – those using only one or two of the three platforms in a given month to watch primetime television programming – show a clearer and more significant difference by age. Millenials are more likely to use the newer platforms exclusively, with 4.5 percent watching online only, compared with 2.1 percent of Boomers. A little more than 7 percent use online and either live TV or DVR compared with 3-5 percent of Boomers.

“There are signs that the non-tech Boomers will catch up and embrace new technologies for viewing content, so marketers should time their options and not write them off,” said Welsh. “While Millenials have shifted to online access, Boomers are clearly becoming active users of both live TV and DVRs for content access.”

The study was implemented through a special research panel built by IMMI to capture Internet as well as television and radio consumption. IMMI provides panel members with a mobile phone, asking them to carry it with them wherever they go. The mobile phone is equipped with a technology that creates digital signatures of all the audio media (television, radio and movies) to which it has been exposed. IMMI can determine viewing audiences, as well as certain types of consumer behavior based on a timeline of when the media was viewed or heard.

For more information at http://www.immi.com