Sam Cousins, chief strategy officer at The Media Store, writes that Instagram’s new Teen accounts and the restrictions that may be coming from the Federal Government are marketing’s “cookieless moment” and that the entire industry will need to diversify as a result.
Last week Meta announced the new teen restrictions for Instagram a week after the Federal Government continued its pledge to increase the age, and whilst the two are ostensibly not linked, it is a step in the right direction for families all over Australia. We are the first generation of parents to deal with the impact of social media on our children and we are worried. We need federal policy to align with technology owners if we want to see true success.
On the surface the new measures certainly help all of the children who have been honest about their age, making accounts private, stopping messages or calls from strangers and blocking content. I also welcome turning off notifications in the app from 10pm to 7am (probably something adults need too). I also like the AI development that looks for markers, behaviours and triggers that can help identify children who have lied about their age.
The mother in me likes the sentiment, the cynic in me can’t help but think there is a perfectly wrapped-up teen audience now, clearly identifiable and captured waiting to be sold to an approved list of clients. The Gen Alpha audience has now reached the age of 15 and will soon start to enter prime consuming years – especially on social media. They are exceptionally hard to reach for advertisers. I’m sure it won’t be long before Meta offers a 13-16-year-old segment (not to mention all the 8-13-year-olds who say they are 13) that could be offered to low-risk advertisers in acceptable categories.
And I get it, I want to target that audience for clients I have in higher education where a 15 and 16-year-old is our primary audience. Targeting youth has always been a challenge, if I look at my own children’s (aged 8 and 11) device usage, they are exposed to poorly targeted ads across YouTube Shorts and various in-app advertisers. Luckily, they have a healthy level of (learned) scepticism and turn their devices to aeroplane mode when the ads come on to skip them. An insight itself into the future of ad avoidance.
They complain every time an ad comes on interrupting their allocated screen time. This next generation we are protecting doesn’t want ads in their traditional form, and that’s why I don’t think brands should be too worried about these new restrictions. We need to evolve our approach to engaging youth with media regardless.
I believe we will soon enter a time when this next cohort reject the algorithm. They are the first fully digitally literate generation who will understand more than anyone how the ‘machine’ works. This may be a generation who does not want to be told what they read, see and engage with. They will become more savvy about fake news and start to question what is authentic online. This rejection may also line up with understanding their data worth and what that should cost to those platforms who want to control their content feeds.
All of this is a good reminder to start creating new strategies with young people now. The shift is already happening with Gen Zs preferring real experiences with brands over digital, moving to private conversations in dark social over openly sharing everything on Instagram or TikTok, and taking control of their privacy. This is our ‘cookieless moment’, the time to diversify and be ready.
