Evan Shapiro on Engaging Young Audiences

Thought leader and media cartographer Evan Shapiro shared his unique perspectives on cutting through a crowded children’s media landscape at the TV Kids Summer Festival.

TV Kids’ Anna Carugati interviewed Shapiro for the keynote session, which you can view here, where he discussed the crucial role of gaming and social video in kids’ media diets.

“The thing that catches my curiosity on a regular basis is the evolution of our media ecosystem in all four sectors: video, audio, social and gaming,” Shapiro said. “The convergence of all of those sectors into what I consider a personal bundle that most consumers manage on their own, in their pocket, on their phones or on their screens via their remote controls. Watching control move even further into the hands of the consumers across all four of those sectors is really what I track on a daily basis.”

Discussing Generation Alpha, Shapiro cited a “downturn in media consumption” over the last several years as kids, with pent-up demand post-Covid, look to spend more time doing things outside and with friends. “But apart from that, the one thing that Generation Alpha says that they do every day is game. Seventy percent of kids between the ages of 8 and 15 say they game every single day. It’s not just gameplay. A tremendous amount of the time is social. There is a metaverse that’s taking place on Roblox, on Minecraft and Fortnite and PUBG. That is part gameplay, but a good deal of this is a new version of social media. If you want to see where Web 2.5 is taking shape, it’s in these fully functional, always on, with their own economies, platforms that we call games that are much more than that.”

He continued: “When you look at where they spend their video time, increasingly there’s this ‘yes/and’ point of view among all consumers, but especially among those under the age of 20. YouTube is one of the first places that they’ll go for video content. Netflix is the second place. Twitch is a place that they spend a tremendous amount of time, but then also Disney+. There’s this real acceptance of the idea that I’m going to jump from free media on social video to premium video on a subscription platform and back and forth. The idea that publishers don’t see social video as premium video is a big mistake. They’re going to miss a whole generation if they don’t pay attention to social video consumption, which younger consumers see as equal to premium video. Mr. Beast is the biggest star in the world for consumers under the age of 14. The amount of time that young people spend on Twitch, YouTube and TikTok and all these other social media platforms is really important to pay attention to.”

On young people’s willingness to spend money on content, Shapiro referenced a study done with Publishers Clearing House showing that 64 percent of people under the age of 34 are willing to pay for content. “If you have a child under the age of 15 and you’ve ever seen charges from Fortnite or PUBG or Minecraft or Roblox, you know that these generations are very willing and able to pay for content, whether it’s their own money or their parents’ money.”

Shapiro continued: “When we asked these consumers under the age of 34, what are they planning to do in the year ahead with their subscriptions—across audio and video and other areas—41 percent said, I’m going to pay more to get rid of ads. That doesn’t mean that they won’t watch free stuff with ads, but their intention is, as they get resources, to create environments where they’re ad-free because seen as a better experience. The content still is king, and you have to think like these young consumers if you’re going to get inside their minds, their pockets, their eyeballs.”

Carugati asked Shapiro about the entry points for Gen A. “Gaming is one of the most important ways to get in,” he said. “These are very large live streaming platforms, billions of hours viewed on Twitch, YouTube and Facebook; people watching people play games. Another really important entry point is TikTok. Most people under the age of 18, when you ask them what they want to do when they grow up, they say they want to be an influencer. That’s where the attention and gravity are spinning right now.”

Offering up advice to IP owners looking to drive engagement, Shapiro noted: “If you own a really big brand like Snoopy or Teletubbies or something like that, it makes a lot of sense to make a deal with an Apple or a Netflix because they’re going to pay you enormous sums of money to get exclusive access to that intellectual property.”

Shapiro continued: “However, if you’re an IP rights holder or a producer of content, 50 percent of the value that you’re going to get out of your intellectual property from this point forward is going to come from what most people call the creator economy, but what I call the community economy. One of the most important tenets of Web3 is the relationship between the publisher or the artist and their audience, their community.”

If you focus solely on the “gatekeeper economy,” Shapiro said, “you’re going to leave so much of your relationship with your audience and the value you can get out of your intellectual property if you do not practice in the community economy.”

Shapiro urges IP owners to have a presence on a platform like YouTube, TikTok, Fortnite or Snapchat. “Launch the content there, in short periods, get data in, A/B test, understand what works, understand what doesn’t. More importantly, establish the IP and the relationship and the cult around the intellectual property on these other platforms before you start to try to extract the value from the gatekeeper economy. If you walk in the door with an existing piece of intellectual property that has an engaged audience or community already on your side, you’re going to get so much more value and you’re going to offer more value. I can drive an audience to your platform.”

Shapiro then discussed the notion of “reach” today, arguing that it is “no longer a metric” that holds significant value. “First of all, we were never measuring it very well to begin with. And I don’t think it’s a useful metric to even concentrate on. As publishers, we invest because we’re trying to either extract subscription from the user or sell advertising. Either way, those are the two metrics that matter. Is someone willing to pay and how much? And am I selling stuff? Not am I reaching consumers, but are they buying the products I’m selling?”

Shapiro then weighed in on the challenges of discoverability today. “We have created this series of walled gardens that makes finding content incredibly hard. We’ve also oversaturated the market in storytelling to a certain extent because of all these different walled garden platforms. We’ve created a massive paradox of choice issue for publishers and audiences. The more choice you give consumers, the fewer choices they will actually make. I think that’s why testing things out and building audience and community in direct-to-consumer relationships is incredibly important. Just because you sell a show to Netflix doesn’t mean they’re going to surface it well and doesn’t mean anyone’s going to see it. YouTube is a great platform, but it’s also this firehose of content. One of the powers of TikTok is that it helps you discover things through the algorithm that is literally for you. Now it’s also spyware and an addictive, depressive, mind-numbing platform. But there is something to it, which is if you understand what an audience likes, if you can build a direct relationship with a community, they will tell you what’s working. They will tell you how to find more people like them. They will work on your behalf to make sure that your content is being discovered. If you operate exclusively through the gatekeeper economy, even if you’re lucky enough to sell a show to a gatekeeper, the odds that it’s going to get a second or third season are decreasing at a very rapid rate.”

On what’s ahead, Shapiro said, “The adoption of technology and new platforms truly accelerated to a point where change is now a constant state. Change is now accelerated to a daily occurrence. Paying attention to change for the artist, for the publisher, for the producer, is now more important than ever. Especially with Generation A, who is now basically woven change into their DNA, into their very heart rhythm. Disruption is now the operating system of the ecosystem. And so you do have to wake up stupid every day and learn something new about something new every day and not think that just because this is how we behaved, this is how the next generations are going to behave. Generation A is going to be extremely different than every generation that came before it, more so than previous generations because of what they just went through in their most formative years, but also because they are so technologically savvy and so native in what tech is. They factor it into who they are and what they do. Change is now a constant state and you’re going to have to be OK with that. And if you’re not OK with it, that’s OK. But don’t be in the entertainment or media business.”