A recent study shows Generation Z—estimated at 2 billion people worldwide—would rather watch long-form video on a mobile device than on a 65-inch living room TV.
This represents a behavioral shift started by Millennials, who defined the concept of watching video wherever it was convenient for them. Now, the mobile device has become the screen of choice.
With Gen Z spending even more time on their mobile devices, now’s the time to tailor your higher education marketing strategies—especially around open house and college tour times of year—to kids and their parents looking to navigate the world of higher education and have information delivered to their virtual door.
How to do it? A couple of ideas come to mind:
- Mining the apps. All video content on a mobile device is delivered via an app— whether Netflix, YouTube or any of the network TV content providers. That means data—and lots of it—is available from those content providers. Want to target by geography or socioeconomic background? There’s a data set for that.
- Creative use of notifications. Unless you’ve disabled them, email, text and app notifications will still show up at the top of the mobile viewing screen while you’re streaming. The right message can inspire the viewer to temporarily leave the show to investigate something that catches their attention. You can’t do that with a smart TV. Throw them a message about your great campus life or how 90% of your graduates get jobs in their fields. That’ll grab them.
- AI is the future. Radical advancements in the integration of the digital and real worlds are allowing users to ask their devices questions based on what they are seeing and hearing. The Amazon TV app already can display information about the actors seen on screen in real-time. One day soon, someone watching a movie may be able to ask “Alexa, what college campus did they film this movie at?” and up pops your institution.
Will watching TV shows on your smartwatch be next? Probably not. But if Gen Z is wearing one of those while they’re bingeing The Office (yes, middle schoolers really are), you might want to send them a notification. Those things buzz.
