NADbank has crunched some numbers from its 2005 Readership Study to convince advertisers that dailies are the media to use to target baby boomers. One selling point is the fact that eight out of 10 adults aged 50-plus report reading a daily newspaper over the past week, compared with the 76% average for adults 18 to 49.
While average household income for 50-plus, at $64,000, is less than the $72,000 average for the younger demo, their average investment holdings are more than double – $190,000 (50+) versus $75,000 (18-49).
Within this target, about 9% are the most lucrative baby boomers. They have average investment holdings of $490,000. Twenty percent of lucrative boomers have holdings of $500,000 or more. The majority of them – 87% – also report reading a daily newspaper over the past week.
The 50-plus group also spends about 58 minutes reading a newspaper Monday to Friday compared with 39 minutes for adults 18-49. A greater percentage of boomers also read Saturday (61%) and Sunday (37%) newspapers versus 43% and 25% for younger adults.
Boomers: Newspaper reading habits
* Spent less time reading daily newspapers compared to past year: 20%
* Spent the same time reading daily newspapers compared to past year: 69%
* Spent more time reading daily newspapers compared to past year: 11%
Boomers will continue to be a major force as a consumer group, although their consumption of various product and service categories will change as they age. According to NADbank’s analysis, boomers, while heavy users of traditional media, are open and adaptable to new technologies and media. They are a lucrative segment for the travel industry and for automobiles, being most likely to turn to dailies for information about automobiles (40%) than any other medium.
Since they have a longer life expectancy than previous generations, boomers will also be big consumers of health care services. Fifty percent of them already read the health pages in their daily newspapers compared with 30% of adults 18 to 49.
