THE EMERGENCE OF GENERATION Z AND ITS IMPACT IN ADVERTISING

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This Viewpoint presents the results of a study into the marketing attitudes of Gen Z, which involved a quantitative survey, a qualitative survey and quantitative advertising testing.

The research team found that more members of Gen Z are spending a significant amount of time using mobile devices, compared to traditional media. While television is still important, the pattern of migration shows spend on traditional channels may decline. Gen Z members are more antipathetic towards mobile advertising. Users should be given some control over their advertising and innovation should be encouraged. The team recommends that creative should be high quality, interactive, have strong aesthetics and make clever use of humour and celebrities. It should be remembered that receptivity is claimed, not measured, that receptivity does not equate to effectiveness and that the study is a point-in-time snapshot. Marketers should overinvest in Gen Z to build understanding of the audience as it grows.

Editors’ Note:

Kantar Millward Brown regularly analyzes attitudes and reactions toward advertising. Duncan Southgate, global brand director of media and digital, led the firm’s 2016 “AdReaction” generational focus on people ages 16 to 45 years, exploring their attitudes and behaviors toward traditional and digital advertising formats. The younger participants (16-19-year-olds) belong to the emerging Generation Z cohort, for whom marketers increasingly will have to adapt short-term media-planning and creative-development tactics. But the implications and importance of Gen Z go well beyond their own spending power (whether personal wealth or via pester power) and should be used to shape long-term strategic marketing decisions, Southgate believes. Marketers, therefore, should be careful not to underinvest in media spend and creative experimentation—as well as in research to understand what works and why—when targeting Gen Z consumers.

INTRODUCTION

In his review of the Advertising Research Foundation’s 80 years of research, Horst Stipp (2016) reminded us that a prerequisite for effective advertising is understanding the changing consumer. “Generation Z have become the next generational focus,” Stipp, an Advertising Research Foundation executive vice president of research and innovation, wrote. This new generation now is approaching adulthood. Generation Z (sometimes called “postmillennials” or “centennials”; more recently called “pivotals”) is the first generation to have grown up with smartphones.

A good amount of research has been published about how Gen Y’s (i.e., millennials’) behaviors and attitudes differ from those of older generations. Until very recently, however, there has been less large-scale research available about Gen Z, largely for the practical reason that most of them were under 16, and interviewing this group required parental permission. As a result, much Gen Z research has been either single country (most often the United States) or exclusively qualitative in nature.

In the second half of 2016, Kantar Millward Brown researchers embarked on the AdReaction Gen X, Y, and Z study, a global research program designed to help brands engage across generations. They believe this to be the largest quantitative and qualitative study exploring the marketing attitudes of Gen Z alongside millennials and Gen X. Kantar Millward Brown wanted to understand how radically different Gen Z’s media attitudes and behaviors are from those of people in the older Gen Y (millennials) and Gen X (Baby Busters) generations. They also set out to understand how much of a challenge this difference poses to marketers as they develop creative content and strategies.

Although there is some debate about generational cutoffs, the current study used the following definitions:

Gen Z: ages 16 to 19 years (equating to birth dates 1997–2000);
Gen Y: ages 20 to 34 years (equating to birth dates 1982–1996);
Gen X: ages 35 to 49 years (equating to birth dates 1967–1981).

The research, therefore, covered just the older members of the Gen Z cohort, who typically are defined as being ages 5 to 19 years (birth dates 1997–2011). The wider Gen Z cohort already numbers close to 2 billion people globally (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2015). There were three study phases: quantitative survey, qualitative survey, and advertisement testing.

Quantitative Survey

Quantitative survey research was conducted in 39 countries in Africa, the Middle East, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America, and North America (See Appendix). There were 200 interviews with participants representing each of the Generation Z, Y, and X cohorts, or about 600 interviews per country. The total global sample size was 23,907 interviews. All interviewing was conducted online via Warren, NJ-based Lightspeed Research and that firm’s panel partners. Panelists generally were notified via e-mail, and surveys primarily were conducted on desktop computers, although participants also could respond using mobile devices. The survey questions addressed participants’ lifestyle, their attitudes to advertising and content formats, and the factors that made them more open to advertising (both media and creative factors; see Appendix).

Qualitative Survey

Online discussion forums were conducted via desktop and mobile devices among Gen Z in the United States, Germany, and China, with some 30 participants in each country. The forums explored why differences were observed among this age group.

Advertisement Testing

In parallel, quantitative advertisement testing was conducted for 31 video advertisements (11 on television, 8 on Facebook, and 12 on YouTube) across 10 countries (See Appendix). Again through online interviewing via Lightspeed, some 100 interviews were completed for each generation (around 300 total interviews per advertisement, for a total global sample size of 8,986 interviews). This testing examined which kind of advertisements appealed more to Gen Z and which appealed across all generations.

For simplicity, the findings discussed in this article are based on global averages across all countries. A sample of country-level data is provided in the Appendix, with full country findings available online at www.millwardbrown.com/adreaction or directly from Kantar Millward Brown.

On the basis of the extensive findings, this article offers marketers recommendations for media planning and creative strategies to help them reach this challenging audience. The article also acknowledges this study’s limitations and offers open questions to advance further research in this area.

MEDIA-PLANNING RECOMMENDATIONS

Identifying Gen Z Platforms

This research team believes media investments should transition to platforms where Gen Z spend more time and are more receptive to advertisements. Media planning long has been a game of placing media where the target audience is spending the most time, but it is also important to consider how open people are to advertising messages. It is well established that consumers have very definite ideas about the advertising content in different media (Larkin, 1979). Obviously it is trickier to predict the places where people will spend the most time in the future and how their attitudes to media will change, but the differences among Generations X, Y, and Z give some indications of the direction of travel.

The current study found that more members of Gen Z are spending a significant amount of time using mobile devices, whereas fewer of them spend time watching television, listening to the radio, and reading print publications. Usage of desktop computers is similar across generations. Gen Z consumers also are less receptive to advertisements within these platforms.

Television remains a high-reach and high-receptivity platform for Gen Z, which makes it attractive to mass-market advertisers, but unless this pattern of migration toward mobile usage reverses, it appears that the share of advertising spending for the three traditional channels likely will decline in the long-term. Billboard advertising has similar reach and receptivity across generations, which suggests that its share of advertising spend less likely will be affected.

Mobile devices should represent a clear media-growth opportunity. In the current study, 74 percent of Gen Z participants claimed to spend more than one hour per day accessing the web via a mobile device, compared with 66 percent of Gen Y and 55 percent of Gen X participants. The current study’s qualitative research helped diagnose this mobile dependency. Gen Z participants referred to their smartphone as their “personal secretary” and their “lifeline.” They said they increasingly are using smartphones because these devices have constantly advancing features that enable users to consume more content and perform more tasks.

The challenge for marketers is that receptivity to mobile advertisements is very low, even lower than for digital advertisements on desktops, and this especially is true for Gen Z (See Figure 1). Their net positivity (the percentage who were negative to the format, subtracted from the percentage who were positive to the format, on a 5-point scale) was lower toward mobile display advertisements:

13 percent for Gen Z;
3 percent for Gen Y;
9 percent for Gen X.

Gen Z’s net positivity was also lower toward mobile video:

19 percent for Gen Z;
8 percent for Gen Y;
14 percent for Gen X.

It is interesting to note that the Gen Y millennials were least negative toward digital-advertising formats in general, so although the digital industry made headway with the previous youth generation, the future outlook now looks less positive unless marketers compensate by addressing other Gen Z preferences.

Favor User-Controlled Formats

Online media investment should transition to advertising formats that give the user more control, the current research team believes. Viewers prefer skippable video advertisements (Pashkevich, Dorai-Raj, Kellar, and Zigmond, 2012; Kantar Millward Brown, 2015), a finding confirmed in the current research. In the current study, all generations preferred online advertisements that provided control over the viewing experience, but Gen Z participants were the most discriminating. They were the most positive toward formats that offered control and the most negative toward formats that took away this control:

Gen Z members were more positive toward skippable preroll advertisements, with a net positivity of 15 percent Gen Z, versus
- 12 percent Gen Y and
- 8 percent Gen X,

compared with negative reactions to nonskippable prerolls:

36 percent Gen Z,
26 percent Gen Y, and
32 percent Gen X.
The same was true of social click-to-play advertisements,
20 percent Gen Z,
19 percent Gen Y, and
10 percent Gen X,

compared to social autoplay advertisements:

22 percent Gen Z,
15 percent Gen Y, and
22 percent Gen X.

The online forums in the qualitative research phase illustrated these findings. As one Chinese respondent noted, “Ads on video sites are the most disgusting among all. I have watched a [nonskippable] 20-min animated video which contains an ad of 120-s and one more 20-s ad in between.”

Gen Z attitudes such as this one further should quicken the adoption of formats offering control. Kantar Millward Brown believes this has long-term strategic implications, because it seems unlikely that attitudes to invasive online formats will soften over time. Marketers shifting media spend to skippable formats also will need to ensure that their creative assets work optimally in that environment.

Choose Innovative Online Formats

Online media investment targeted at Gen Z should be more innovative than media targeted at older generations. In the current study, Gen Z attitudes consistently were more positive than older generations to newer, more innovative online-advertising formats. This applies to mobile reward videos (net positivity of 41 percent Gen Z versus 32 percent Gen Y and 25 percent Gen X), which are considered a fair value exchange. This was summed up by one U.S. Gen Z qualitative participant, who said, “Even though [mobile rewards] are ad[s] it’s still giving you something in return for taking the time.”

This finding also applies to sponsored lenses (24 percent Gen Z versus 17 percent Gen Y and 8 percent Gen X), which a German Gen Z respondent described as being “fun to play around with and to unwind, pass time,” and to sponsored filters (16 percent Gen Z versus 12 percent Gen Y and 3 percent Gen X).

Over the years, Kantar Millward Brown researchers consistently have observed that online-advertising formats enjoy a honeymoon period. That is, they are more effective in building brands during the first few years, while their novelty value helps them stand out. It appears from the current research that this likely is especially true among Gen Z members.

CREATIVE RECOMMENDATIONS

Expect a Challenge

Creative quality needs to improve for online-marketing effectiveness to stand still. Gen Z consumers have grown up in a world rich in choice, including multiple screen environments and video and music on demand—and their brains appear to have adapted to this environment, according to some observers. A 2014 article in the Canadian national current affairs weekly Maclean’s reported that “if children are less likely to dig deep and find out the rationale behind something, or to memorize it ‘their brains are rewarded not for staying on task, but for jumping to the next thing’—a useful ability in the digital era,” quoting pediatrician Michael Rich, executive director of Harvard’s Centre of Media and Child Health. The article also cited author and consultant Don Tapscott’s observation that children have “adaptive reflexes—faster switching and more active working memories.”

The current study, in fact, showed that Gen Z members skipped online advertisements faster and more frequently and that they tried harder to avoid them than previous generations. In the third phase of the study, as part of the advertisement-testing process for YouTube videos, videos were exposed on the live YouTube site as skippable videos, so that behavioral data could be captured demonstrating whether and when people chose to skip past the advertisements. Across the 12 YouTube videos tested in this study, among people who skipped, Gen Z participants skipped significantly faster (average skip time of 9.5 seconds versus 10.9 seconds for Gen Y and 12.6 seconds for Gen X).

Within the quantitative surveys, the researchers also asked people what actions they had taken to block or avoid advertisements on their desktop computers and on their mobile phones. Among a list of options, Gen Z participants

significantly more likely endorsed “I skip ads whenever I can” for both
- desktop (56 percent Gen Z versus 50 percent Gen Y and 49 percent Gen X) and
- mobile (47 percent Gen Z versus 40 percent Gen Y and 37 percent Gen X);
more likely claimed to have installed a desktop advertisement-blocking plug-in (31 percent Gen Z versus 30 percent Gen Y and 22 percent Gen X);
more likely would look away from the screen on their mobile to avoid advertisements (26 percent Gen Z versus 19 percent Gen Y and 13 percent Gen X).

All of this adds up to a major challenge for winning the attention of Gen Z on the digital-advertising platforms where they are spending the most media time. In order to overcome this challenge, advertisers clearly need to develop highly engaging creative content.

Be Interactive

Advertisements targeted at Gen Z should offer interactivity. Members of Gen Z prefer advertisements that allow them to cocreate or to see what happens after they make any decision. In this study, Gen Z respondents claimed to be more open to advertisements when they could

“vote for something to happen” (31 percent Gen Z versus 25 percent Gen Y and 22 percent Gen X) and
“take decisions (about the ending, the story, the characters)” (27 percent Gen Z versus 22 percent Gen Y and 17 percent Gen X).

In contrast, Gen X participants had a more basic preference for advertisements that simply allowed them to “find out more about the brand´s brand (e.g., link to website)” (32 percent Gen Z versus 31 percent Gen Y and 35 percent Gen X).

The researchers believe this preference makes sense, because this generation of children has grown up in a world where many everyday objects and media experiences are dynamic, clickable, and swipeable. Even as they age and have less spare time to engage with advertising campaigns, this expectation of the option to interact likely will be retained.

Push the Aesthetic

Music and design should receive greater strategic attention to ensure that creative content engages across generations. When used effectively, music can be a powerful enhancement for an advertisement. Musical genres have a profound influence on image perceptions in television and radio advertisements (Oakes and North, 2013). Accumulated copy-testing knowledge (Kantar Millward Brown, 2015), moreover, has shown that although the use of music does not confer benefits automatically, the inspired use of the right music can affect every aspect of an advertisement’s performance.

The current study confirms that music is a powerful creative attribute across all generations, especially among Gen Z (56 percent Gen Z versus 46 percent Gen Y and 45 percent Gen X; good music made respondents more positive to advertisements). This is further supported by responses to a lifestyle question; far more of the Gen Z participants claimed they “like to have always-on access to music via digital platforms” (43 percent Gen Z versus 30 percent Gen Y and 25 percent Gen X).

Gen Z consumers, moreover, preferred advertisements that appeared in music contexts (39 percent Gen Z versus 32 percent Gen Y and 28 percent Gen X; this made them more positive toward advertisements). Although Gen Z members’ time to enjoy music may reduce as they get older and busier, their greater exposure to on-demand music through their formative years suggests this passion likely could travel with them in later life.

AdReaction qualitative forums made it clear that Gen Z consumers around the world emphasize music as a defining characteristic of good advertisments, with cultural nuances to the type of music that works best. In China, Gen Z members wanted music to be upbeat, playful, and fun, whereas in Germany, the youngsters said that music influences the mood and style of the advertisement, and they found advertisements with appropriate music “easier to consume.”

Although “good” design certainly is subjective, the importance of design in advertising is undeniable. Advertisements using visual metaphors are more effective than those without (Chang, Wu, Lee, and Chu, 2016). The current study suggests this importance could be on the rise. Gen Z consumers more likely would pay attention to an online video that “is visually appealing or has great design” (30 percent Gen Z versus 24 percent Gen Y and 24 percent Gen X), and the same was true of

online display advertisements (30 percent Gen Z versus 25 percent Gen Y and 25 percent Gen X) and
billboards (38 percent Gen Z versus 34 percent Gen Y and 35 percent Gen X).

It thus seems that the Gen Z cohort had a sophisticated level of visual discernment. These young people took note of an advertisement’s visual qualities. This may not be surprising, given that this generation has lived during a time when design-led Apple was the most valuable brand in the world (Kantar Millward Brown, 2015). Qualitative forums in the current study suggest that Gen Z participants tended to find television commercials and cinema advertisements to be of the highest visual quality, but they also appreciated when digital advertisements had a strong visual aesthetic or used new, more immersive formats to enhance the visual experience.

Brands looking to take advantage of these insights need to elevate music and design beyond executional considerations and develop music and design strategic plans. This approach is typified by Oreo, the Nabisco cookie celebrated for its cream filling. The “Wonderfilled” execution created by the Martin Agency used bold and distinctive stylized animation and music that was created by Owl City especially for the brand. It originally was published online in 2013 and performed well in many markets around the world. The cartoon-like advertisement wonders whether giving an Oreo cookie to archetypal “baddies,” such as the Big Bad Wolf, Dracula, and sharks, would change their stories. Copy-testing research for this study in Brazil showed that it worked well across all generations but was particularly loved by Gen Z. The music was adapted and deployed in further executions, including “Wonder Vault” and “Dunk Challenge.”

Use Humor and Celebrities Wisely

Humor and celebrities are two useful creative tactics for advertisements targeting younger audiences. Some researchers (Kantar Millward Brown, 2015) have identified humor as the primary creative attribute that prevents advertisement skipping for online video, and there is also evidence that humor can make advertisements more enjoyable, involving, and memorable (Kantar Millward Brown, 2013). Within the current research, all generations cited humor as the primary creative attribute that makes them more positive toward advertisements, particularly among Gen Z (65 percent Gen Z versus 61 percent Gen Y and 61 percent Gen X).

Humor may not be appropriate for all brands, and there are cultural nuances in the types of humor that appeal across markets. Funny advertisements, however, can be successful in capturing and holding the attention of Gen Z audiences. As one Chinese qualitative forum participant said, “[When ads are funny] they make me forget about skipping the ad.”

It long has been established that there are advantages and hazards of using celebrities in advertising (Kaikati, 1987; Kantar Millward Brown, 2016). The current research found that celebrities generally were not an essential creative element and were less powerful overall than humor, music, and design—with the exception of Gen Z. Celebrities, in fact, appeared more important to Gen Z, who likely will be more positive to advertisements featuring “a famous celebrity” (22 percent Gen Z versus 18 percent Gen Y and 14 percent Gen X) and to advertisements featuring “an online/social media celebrity” (18 percent Gen Z versus 14 percent Gen Y and 9 percent Gen X).

The current qualitative research shows that the types of celebrities that resonate most strongly with Gen Z for advertising endorsement vary by culture. The China forum, for example, suggested that the personality and character of the celebrities featured is of particular importance, whereas participants in Germany and the United States noted that the celebrities needed to be authentic: There needed to be credibility that they would actually use this brand.

Without an obvious formative generational influence to explain Gen Z’s heightened appreciation of humor and celebrities, it may be that these insights are more a function of life stage than generation. They nonetheless remain important tactics for brands targeting younger audiences to consider.

LIMITATIONS AND OPEN QUESTIONS

Despite the scope of this study, the researchers acknowledge that this work merely scratches the surface of Gen Z understanding. There are three principal limitations to this research.

Receptivity is claimed. Receptivity to advertising is a complex process that a survey-based approach only can partly explain. Although Gen Z respondents may claim to prefer television advertisements over online display advertisements and their receptivity to nonskippable video may be lower than that of older generations, this may not necessarily be reflected in their physical behaviors or emotional responses. There is the potential for further validation of the results from this study using neuroscience techniques, such as facial coding, eye tracking, implicit testing, and biometrics and electroencephalography.
Receptivity does not necessarily equate to effectiveness.Higher claimed receptivity is no guarantee of greater marketing effectiveness. Indeed, Kantar Millward Brown’s own CrossMedia effectiveness database suggests that online display and video advertisements similarly are impactful and more cost-effective per dollar spent than outdoor advertisements on most brand metrics, despite having much lower receptivity. So although people may dislike certain advertising formats, this does not necessarily mean they will not take note of this advertising content. The implication is that advertisers should respect and listen to consumers’ advertising preferences, but they should not base marketing-investment decisions on these data alone.
This is a point-in-time snapshot.With this point-in-time study, this research team is unable to definitively tease apart the attitudinal differences due to life stage (g., things that Gen Z will grow out of as they get older) and those due to generation (e.g., things Gen Z will grow up with). Clearly this would require longitudinal research to provide more definitive evidence, using comparable historical data on the opinions of millennials from when they were 16–19 years old more than a decade ago (which, to this author’s knowledge, are not available).

For marketers, differences driven more by life stage remain short-term tactical opportunities to exploit within individual campaigns that currently are targeting Gen Z. The more important differences, however, are the generational ones, which should have long-term strategic implications for how marketers build their marketing teams and allocate media spend.

The best way to understand a generation is to look at their starting points—the experiences that occurred as they came of age—which provides context for their formative years. These starting points allow you to have a dynamic understanding of the cohort: If you know how they got here, you can understand where they are going in the future. It is the application of this philosophy that has led to the opinions in the current article about which Gen Z differences most likely will stand the test of time. Only time will tell whether this crystal-ball gazing is correct.

The current research suggests that further examination of Generation Z usefully could explore some of the following open questions:

Will Gen Z consumers remain lighter television viewers than earlier generations? Will later members of the Gen Z cohort (those currently ages 5 to 15 years) be even lighter television viewers than the 16–19-year-olds in this study?
Will so many members of Gen Z continue to spend so much time using smartphones, even as they get older and busier?
Is Gen Z’s claimed lower receptivity to television, radio, and print advertisements reflected in other metrics (behavioral responses, brand effectiveness, or sales response)?
Is Gen Z’s lower online and mobile advertising receptivity reflected in further behavioral responses, beyond faster skip rates? Is it reflected in other metrics (brand effectiveness or sales response)?
Will Gen Z consumers’ greater intolerance of nonskippable formats moderate as they get older?
If the online-advertising industry more widely adopts formats that provide control, will this improve online-advertising receptivity? Alternatively, are there other factors (g., clutter, data privacy) that will continue to hold back attitudes to online advertisements?
Is low online-advertising receptivity partly to blame for advertisement blocking?

CONCLUSION

Information revealed in the current study suggests a new marketing approach is required for the Generation Z audience. The researchers acknowledge that there is not yet enough empirical knowledge to definitively prove their findings. The data, however, are compelling enough to caution marketers not to underinvest in this audience. On the contrary, although 16–19-year-olds may represent a relatively small share of a typical brand’s target audience, the researchers believe marketers easily could justify planning to double media spend and research investment among this audience, because understanding how they are different has long-term business value. Marketers, therefore, should be overinvesting (relative to their audience size and buying power) in Gen Z media and creative experimentation to plug the gaps in the current knowledge and further enhance understanding of an audience that is fast growing in importance.

Kantar Millward Brown researchers believe the current study provides a wide range of insights into the media and creative attitudes of the emerging Gen Z cohort. Although the direction of future travel for these differences remains unclear, there are immediate opportunities for marketers to take advantage of these insights.

Perhaps most important, within the digital world, brands should stop using invasive, nonskippable online formats, which are disliked strongly by all generations, especially Gen Z. This younger generation already more likely uses advertisement-blocking software and other avoidance techniques, so unless industry practice improves radically and rapidly, an entire new generation may be set against online advertising.

Brands should increase experimentation with innovative online formats, such as mobile-rewards video, native advertisements and sponsored lenses, and sponsored filters, which are viewed more positively, especially among Gen Z consumers. Brands also should be seeking to incorporate interactivity where possible and placing greater strategic importance on music and design within creative-development processes.

Appendix

Country Participation

Countries included in the quantitative research:

Africa and the Middle East: Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, South Africa
Asia-Pacific: Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam
Europe: Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom
Latin America: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico
North America: Canada (English), Canada (French), the United States.

Advertisement-testing country list: Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States.

Countries included in qualitative online forums: China, Germany, the United States.

Sample Survey Questions and Response Options

Advertising receptivity was measured on a 5-point scale. “Don’t know” responses were removed from the analysis, and the researchers calculated a summary “net positivity” score by subtracting the “very negative” or “somewhat negative” percentage from the “very positive” or “somewhat positive” percentage.

How would you describe your attitude toward each of the following formats of advertising?

Television ads
Newspaper ads
Magazine ads
Radio ads
Billboard/outdoor ads
Direct mail (postal)
Cinema ads (appear before movies at the cinema)
Product placements that appear within a movie or show
Online display (image + text) ads on my laptop or PC
Online display (image + text) ads on my smartphone or tablet
Video ads on my laptop or PC
Video ads on my smartphone or tablet
Online search (text link) ads.

Response options:

Very positive
Somewhat positive
Neutral
Somewhat negative
Very negative
Don’t know.

How would you describe your attitude toward each of the following formats of online video advertising?

Pre-roll: Before watching a video, you see a video from a brand (no option to skip).
Skippable pre-roll: Before watching a video, you see a video from a brand. You can skip after 5 seconds.
Social auto-play: While looking through your feed on a social platform, you see a video from a brand that auto-plays.
Social click-to-play: While looking through your feed on a social platform, you see a video from a brand that you can click to play.
In-banner auto-play: While surfing the web, you see an ad that auto-plays a video from a brand.
In-banner click-to-play: While surfing the web, you see an ad that you can click to play a video from a brand.
View to play: While surfing the web, you see an ad in the middle of an article that auto-plays. The sound is off but you can tap or hover over to turn sound on.
Mobile app pop-up: While using a mobile app, a full-screen video from a brand appears (no option to skip).
Skippable mobile app pop-up: While using a mobile app, a full-screen video from a brand appears. You can exit immediately.
Mobile app reward: While using a mobile app, you choose to earn points/rewards by watching a full-screen video from a brand.
Skippable vertical video: Short, skippable in-feed vertical video ads.

And how would you describe your attitude toward each of the following formats of online advertising?

Expandable ads: Ads that size up when you roll over or click them and then they compress to their original size.
Native ads: Ads that appear within an article or a post and are aligned with the look and feel of the website.
Take over ads: When all the ads in a page are for the same brand.
Sponsored filters: Digital “stickers” sponsored by brands that you can overlay on your photos/videos.
Sponsored lenses: Brand-sponsored 3D/facial recognition animations that you can overlay on your selfies.

Time spent using media channels was split into weekday and weekend questions and weighted together (5/7 weekday response, 2/7 weekend response).

Thinking about the last week or two, roughly how long did you spend doing these activities on a typical week day?
Thinking about the last week or two, roughly how long did you spend doing these activities on a typical weekend day?

Watching television (not online)
Reading magazines (not online)
Reading newspapers (not online)
Listening to the radio (not online)
Traveling or walking out and about
Using the Internet on a laptop or PC for something other than e-mail
Using the Internet on a mobile device for something other than e-mail.

Response options:

None
Up to a quarter-hour
Half hour
1 hour
2 hours
3 hours
4 hours
5 hours
6 or more hours.

Statistical testing of differences referenced in this article was conducted at the 90 percent significance level.

Samples of Country-by-Country Findings

Gen Z consumers usually were less positive to advertising than members of Gen Y and X. This applied in 29 of the 39 countries studied, especially India (20 percent lower gap), Spain (18 percent lower gap), and Colombia (17 percent lower gap).

Overall, Gen Z members were more discriminating toward online video formats. All generations were more positive toward skippable than nonskippable video, but this gap was particularly wide among Gen Z. This was true in 28 of the 39 countries studied, especially so in Ireland (53 percent higher gap), Spain (42 percent higher gap), and the United States (42 percent higher gap).