Study: Culturally-relevant content drives engagement

Music video platform Vevo has partnered with MAGNA and IPG Media Lab, to reveal significant findings around the nuances of multicultural audiences’ video viewing behaviour.

The Anatomy of a Video Experience: A Multicultural Study explores how audiences consume content across multiple devices and their motivations around viewing habits. Understanding these subtleties is key for advertisers and brands looking to reach receptive audiences and better inform their planning efforts.

The study found that all of the US audiences observed (Black, Asian, Hispanic and White), shared a love of co-viewing (watching video with someone other than yourself) on OTT devices compared to desktop, mobile, laptop and linear TV.

Longer viewing periods result from content that people find culturally relevant, specifically sports and music. On average, 37 per cent of highly culturally relevant content viewing sessions last for one hour or more. When it comes to ad receptivity in particular, viewing music content on OTT devices is key, with over 60 per cent of each group responding that they would be receptive to ads.

“Partnering with MAGNA and IPG Media Lab once again for this study is really valuable for our business,” says Bryon Schafer, SVP of Research, Vevo, “With recent findings showing that 79 per cent of Vevo’s CTV content is being co-viewed, it’s important for us to understand the nuances of audience behaviours in order to pass on these insights with our clients and partners. No screen is seeing a greater surge in Vevo viewership than the television, which has seen an increase of over 20 per cent since March of this year with 61 million viewers exclusively engaging on connected TV screens. Modeling user behavior against our content and go-to-market strategies keep us in tune with our global audiences. We’ve really enjoyed finding out exactly what makes viewers tune in – and stay tuned in to the content they watch.”

While co-viewing on OTT devices spans across all surveyed groups, each demographic has vast differences around why, when and how they watch content on various devices. Some of these findings include:

• Asian audiences:
  • Older audiences are more likely to seek out informative videos for task-based viewing sessions across all devices.
  • Younger Asian audiences are more likely to watch binge-friendly genres, such as music, resulting in longer viewing periods of over an hour across all devices.

• Black/African American audiences:
  • As a whole, Black audiences watch binge-worthy content for longer periods of time. However, unlike younger Asian audiences, younger Black viewers tend to watch content in shorter spurts of less than 30 minutes, likely driven by higher levels of mobile usage.
  • Black viewers are the most likely audience to seek out music and sports content.
  • OTT is the leading device to resonate with Black viewers at their most engaged with 63 per cent of audiences being receptive to ads on this device.

• Hispanic/Latino audiences:
  • English dominant and bilingual Hispanic viewers tend to have longer watch time, while Spanish dominant audiences watch for mid-length sessions of 30-59 minutes.
  • 33 per cent of total Hispanic viewing sessions last longer than one hour.
  • 60 per cent of Hispanic viewers watching music on OTT are receptive to ads.

“Culture is a pervasive and essential part of every consumption and is being driven by people of color,” says Oscar Allain, VP of Cultural Insights at UM. “These consumers are critical to the growth of businesses across all sectors. Not only are they influential in driving their own cultures, but they are also shaping mainstream culture.”

“Our Cultural Dimensions study reinforced the idea that social media platforms have helped propagate and influence the conversation on culture.  So the merging of our datasets with IPG Media Lab’s and MAGNA’s helps to bring new multicultural insights into how we think about creating smarter strategies for data analysis, planning, creative and more,” says Deidre Smalls-Landau, US Chief Marketing Officer and Global Head of Culture for UM.