Last week I argued that usual publisher traffic – direct and branded – has been eroding for yearsand that those under 35 lead the charge. Not directly provable, but a theory.
Now that I’m no longer part of that cohort, it’s easier to blame them. This is exactly what I intend to do.
Younger audience Share does not decrease significantly
Based on 15 of the UK’s biggest publishers (and the always excellent Similarweb data), 18-34 year olds make up 29.5% of the average publisher audience. It’s slightly above our estimated ONS population benchmark by 28%.
On this figure alone, the publishers seem broadly representative of the country they serve. I use the word serve vaguely here.
It even seems quite stable. The average share of publishers among 18-34 year olds has only slightly decreased in three years:
- Premium publishers: -3.0 pp
- Civil service: -2.6pp
- Popular publishers: -1.0 pp
- The platforms experienced the biggest drop in audience share among young people: -6.8pp
Not ideal, but certainly not numbers that justify the furor around young audiences. Especially when we see that the platforms have also lost audience share in the 18-34 age group.
The platforms have on average a younger audience of 49.2%, about 1.7 times the figure of publishers. No traditional publisher reaches 40%. The New York Times tops the rankings with 39.1%, but only for its audience in the United Kingdom; the BBC comes next with 35.1%.
So what is it all about?
Sharing doesn’t tell the whole story. It’s just a report. Your younger audience share may seem less depressing if you’re also losing an older audience. That’s exactly what this data shows.
Across all publisher segments, younger audiences are declining faster than the eldest – out of a total itself down from 12 to 32%. For publishers, younger audiences appear to be a smaller and smaller slice of a shrinking pie.
In real terms, the younger audience has declined much more significantly:
- Popular publishers: -34.2%
- Bonus: -30.7%
- Civil service: -16.9%
- Platforms: -9.2%
Thus, even if the platforms experienced the largest drop in youth audience share (-6.8 pp), they experienced the smallest drop in youth audience in volume.
There are obvious caveats to these figures: third-party data estimates both share and volume. And that’s just website visits; data does not include app data. But when we compare apples to apples, the direction that’s what counts. Even though apples contain wasps.
Have young people left to go to the platforms?
Not according to this data. Not on their websites at least, which is a limitation of this data. The app experience for TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, etc. is significantly better and is almost certainly one of the main purposes of the platform.
It’s very difficult to say that younger audiences have all left social media platforms based on this data alone. Especially since their older viewership grew by more than 10% in real terms.
Nothing in this data proves that the platforms are absorbent the audience that publishers are losing. I’m sure these users have just migrated to streams and apps that are harder to measure – they certainly didn’t move to the open canvas.
What is defensible is simpler and more uncomfortable: among publishers, the younger audience is in absolute and unambiguous decline.
What do we do about it?
If you think attract and retain a younger audience is a problem, you are not an exception. The most traditional publishers are in the same boat. The first step is to diagnose the extent of the problem. Understand exactly where You sit relative to your competitors.
This is exactly the job our diagnostic aimed at younger audiences does: a positional analysis that compares your younger self and engagement against the right peer group and places you in one of four quadrants:
- A distribution problem.
- A commitment problem.
- A problem of relevance.
- Relevant AND engaging (no one exists at this position in the quadrant, but we can dream).
We combine this data with capabilities analysis that maps where you are gaining or losing younger readers in the younger audience funnel. From inspiration (awareness) to fandom (advocacy).
Instead of panicking, we can diagnose, position and give clear indications, data-driven recommendations. Much healthier.
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