Want Gen Z To Watch Your Movie? Go Short To Get Them To Go Long

Hollywood movie marketers face an increasingly thorny challenge: they’re selling (sometimes very) long-form video (known as movies among the olds). And the audience they’d most like to reach, people under about 26 of Gen Z and the Alpha Generation, mostly want to watch (sometimes very) short-form videos. What to do?

It’s just possible that the way to younger audiences’ attention and viewership is using short videos, like on YouTube, Instagram’s Reels, and (particularly) TikTok, at least according to new studio research unveiled at the recent Advertising Research Foundation OTT conference.

The conference, on the Warner Bros. Discovery studio lot in Burbank, Calif., focused on ad-supported streaming video. Presenter after presenter emphasized the shift in viewer attention from traditional “TV” to social video and connected TV, especially among younger audiences. Equally important are the changes that forces on marketers who want to reach those audiences consistently and powerfully.

Warner executives used the event to showcase just-finished research on the viewing habits of Gen Z viewers (ages 13 to 26), a cohort of some 60 million people on the cusp of adulthood who already hold a dominant position in pop culture and buying habits. They have, in many cases, been using tablets and mobile devices to explore the online world since they were toddlers.

“We like to say Gen Z learned to swipe before they learned to wipe,” joked Vera Chien, WBD’s executive director, entertainment insights, corporate strategy, in presenting the study, which WBD created with SmarytPants and Neuro Lab. The study used a wide array of qualitative and quantitative tools, including biometric techniques and secondary data.

Despite their youth, Gen Z audiences already are spending $1.7 billion a year on entertainment, but not much on legacy entertainment, including movies, broadcast and cable TV.

“For Generation Z, YouTube and social video is really becoming their TV,” Chien said. “It’s all about Netflix and Hulu and (Max).”

Little surprise then that the digitally native Gen Z audiences spend roughly similar amounts of time on social media, social video (YouTube and TikTok) and streaming, Chien said. Short-form video is often the preferred way to watch entertainment, though it can also become the way studios can entice Gen Z viewers to seek out longer-form work.

“One can see for the majority of Gen Z and Generation Alpha, their viewing on the screen is non-linear,” said Chien. “Streaming is now their primary way of watching long-form.”

Legacy broadcast and cable are watched little or not at all by many younger viewers, unless sports events or a regular habit of watching a news show at a specific time of day is a “bring back,” bringing them back to legacy outlets, said ARF’s Chief Research Officer Paul Donato.

And for many, the data showed, younger audiences prefer watching YouTube over even Netflix
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. YouTube is as likely as Netflix to be the “desert island” choice of video provider for most of them. TikTok continues to grow in importance for many.

“The rise of social video, it’s now come on par with television for top daily activities,” said Grady Miller, the chief marketing officer of NRG. “It’s just edging out TV in terms of the daily diet. It’s something we’re keeping an eye on for the future.”

The services provide a “more flexible format and platform, videos on every single topic,” said Chien. “They’re shorter, typically…They have social hooks embedded. It’s highly personalized, extremely accessible, there’s no cost of entry, anyone can create, anyone can distribute.”

For marketing companies in Hollywood studios, increasingly, the focus has to be on using short-form video in outlets such as TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Snap to help drive audiences to longer-form programming, speakers said.

As part of the WBD study, the studio took four of its well known franchises, including Friends, which enjoyed a sturdy renaissance among young audiences nearly 30 years after its debut thanks to streaming on Netflix. To promote viewership, they created five different kinds of short promo pieces, to see which would resonate with Gen Z and Alpha viewers.

The top two promos were scenes from the shows, and impressions of scenes from a show as done by social-media users, Chien said. There are other approaches too, like cutting up episodes from recent hit Killing It, and putting them on YouTube, to drive viewership of the show on Peacock.

Going short to go long may be slightly counterintuitive, speakers suggested, but it’s about getting to the next generation of viewers where they spend a large portion of their time.