You Can Skip Ads on YouTube, So Why Are Kids Remembering Them So Well?

Tony Maglio
·3 min read

TV commercials are practically a synonym for annoyance. But for Gen Alpha, YouTube ads are a can’t miss even when they are a can skip.

According to a new study by Precise TV and Giraffe Insights, most kids ages 2-12 (53 percent of them, to be exact) recall the ads they see on YouTube more than any other platform. YouTube delivers 2.3-times better ad recall compared to broadcast and cable television and 2.6-times greater ad recall than video-on-demand.

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The results are similar to ones that Precise and Giraffe released last year, when the groups found that 60 percent of teens 13-17 were more likely to watch YouTube ads rather than skip.

Why are kids not skipping YouTube ads? OK, so some of the ads are just not skippable, but there are reasons far beyond — and far better than — that. For starters, YouTube has best-in-class video ads from a targeting perspective, and contextual relevance is key for an advertiser to see a return on their investment. Viewers of any age will watch a commercial that is meaningful to them.

Plus, younger kids especially just straight-up like their toy commercials. It is an opportunity to see and to dream — remember, these are the ones who aren’t even yet searching Amazon.com on their own (or at least, they shouldn’t be). They are pretty much only exposed to what their parents expose them too.

TV ads are in some ways still a novelty to this group. They grew up on streaming, which until recently, rarely had ads. And amid the initial rise of AVOD, preschool shows still generally didn’t have advertisements — even on a tier where content for older kids and adults did. Finally, many of the littles still not physically holding the remote control, they can’t read, and they may not even yet understand the concept of fast-forwarding.

All of this is music to an advertiser’s ear — as are YouTube’s dominant viewership statistics. According to Nielsen, nearly 10 percent of all “TV” viewing in May was on YouTube. Next up was Netflix with 7.6 percent; no other streaming platform is even at one-third the YouTube number.

The Precise TV study, released today, polled the parents of 3,000 U.S. kids ages 2-12 (Gen Alpha), as well as the kids themselves. YouTube is, by far, the most popular platform among kiddos: 81 percent said they’ve “consumed content recently” on YouTube. And that doesn’t even include YouTube Shorts (39 percent). The second-highest option was VOD, which got just 62 percent.

Thirty-five percent of those surveyed said they find out about the latest toys on YouTube and cited the platform as having the best commercials, followed by broadcast TV and TikTok. Sixteen percent of the kids said they saw the ad for the last thing they asked their parents for on YouTube. That number, again, doesn’t even include YouTube Shorts (7 percent). And here, YouTube Kids is also broken out (6 percent). That’s some serious Pester Power coming out of Google’s video-streaming offices.

Kids are taking us along for the ride. More than half of the kids said like to co-view and “consistently” watch YouTube with a family member, they said. It’s easier to push mom and dad for the newest “Paw Patrol” toy that way.

Advertisers love it because it works: More than 20 percent of parents said they are inspired by those YouTube ads to buy things for their children. The pestering also works: 60 percent of parents said they are more likely to purchase a product they saw advertised when co-viewing with their child.

In addition to Ryder and his team of pups, kids’ favorite content to consume on YouTube includes “SpongeBob Squarepants,” “Bluey,” “Peppa Pig,” “Cocomelon,” “PJ Masks,” “Blippi,” and “Phineas & Ferb,” the study found.

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