iCount Youth Account

Hitting the Advertising Bulls Eye

Spending on youth-targeted advertising tops out at more than 2 BILLION DOLLARS per year!

There are THREE main reasons that advertisers want to attract youthful customers.

1: Parents spend a lot to enhance the lives of their children. You say clothes are only cool if they come from a certain store -- that store gets the dollars.

2: Young people themselves have money to spend. This is especially true while they still live at home and don’t have to come up with cash for rent or car payments. 

3: Youth of today are the adult consumers of tomorrow.

Advertising makes you WANT something, and you buy it or pester your parents to get it for you. And you buy that brand well into your adulthood.

Even at school, corporations market themselves to youth through education initiatives, such as paper products from forestry companies and reading programs sponsored by big business.

More upsetting for a vast majority of parents, commercials for mature video games, restricted movies and explicit content music is directly marketed to young people who are not yet able to purchase or view the product.  But it creates that “want” factor.

The Internet is the biggest marketplace for advertisers trying to capture the youth audience. Young people often surf the ’Net by themselves and there are no regulations governing ad content.  When you use newsgroups or chat rooms, beware of the users who are paid to drop “seeds” into these venues. You may suddenly find yourself chatting about a new music video or sports drink that just happened to come up in the conversation.

Keeping your eyes open and your brain engaged can prevent the mindless following of marketing paths.  You can avoid getting sucked in when you make buying decisions based on education.  And if you fall for a big campaign, don’t despair – it happens to everyone – advertisers count on it!