While marketers have set their sights on figuring out how to engage younger consumers, it can be easy to overlook those who are 50 and older. However, this group boasts $8.3 trillion in collective spending power and represents 180 million Americans.
Through its media network, AARP is able to harness the power of its nearly 38 million members to offer marketers a gateway to this growing demographic, connecting advertisers with members online and through its core properties. The focus on its media network comes as a growing number of digital marketers explore how to leverage customer data to support advertisers’ needs around targeting digital consumers, a trend that started with big retailers like Amazon and has since expanded to include the hospitality industry and, recently, payments platforms like American Express.
Marketing Dive sat down with Danielle McMurray, vice president of marketing at the AARP Media Advertising Network to discuss how the service leverages first-party data and taps into its 50-plus consumer base.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
MARKETING DIVE: How does AARP’s media advertising network build off the data it collects? How does this model relate to the organization’s overall discount model?
DANIELLE MCMURRAY: Think of it as a one-stop-shop for marketers to target our membership, which is over 30 million consumers, and a greater 50 and over audience. It's all about serving our members with the right information to help them live their lives in the best possible way. It's there to support AARP’s social mission.
We have a very high level of trust with our audience. They trust us more than they trust other media. It has to provide value to them, and that goes back to aligning with all the benefits that AARP delivers to our members and all of the products and services that come along with membership. Everything we do is laser focused on serving the members and making sure that our marketers can connect with them, because we know they are the cream-of-the-crop when it comes to the 50-plus demographic.
How does the network play into AARP’s overall brand strategy?
Our network includes our two core magazines — AARP: The Magazine and The Bulletin — and our core website. Looking back 10 years ago, that's what we had. This network was built over time, leveraging our first party-data, leveraging innovation and insights into what was going on in the marketplace and the changing behavior of our audience.
Since the pandemic, every adult aged 50 and over is online. It's not even a question anymore. They are on social media. Maybe they're not on TikTok and Snapchat, but they are on Facebook and Instagram. They're watching YouTube. They're streaming television, and so we built out extensions to target our members because we have that first-party data. We can reach them on these other platforms. We want to be everywhere they are so marketers can reach them everywhere they are, because we know the funnel is not linear anymore. We know frequency matters. We know you just need to be where they are in order to capture them at scale and that's what we deliver.
There is a lot of focus on younger consumers. How does AARP convince marketers there is value in the 50 and older consumer?
We do have to spend a lot of time educating marketers that it’s not another planet when you're 50 plus, it's just another life stage. And it is the wealthiest demographic on earth. It's the largest demographic on earth. They're an unstoppable segment of the consumer marketplace and they are driving markets.
They're at the gym, they're hiking, they're shopping online. They're doing everything that everyone else is. If you look at the numbers, there's no difference anymore in their activities. It's the wealth that's really putting them ahead. They have higher net worths. They're doing more and spending more.
How is AARP utilizing artificial intelligence?
We're under the radar right now. I think the idea is we're not behind the curve. We're on the curve. We're ahead of the curve in many instances, especially with our first-party data. We've built out new segments that are a combination of our audience's online and offline behavior combined with our first-party data, demographics, psychographics and geographics. They use AI optimization to be able to really target specific audiences for these advertisers on and off our channels.
Our website and our newsletters are leveraging personalization right now. That is all informed by AI and data segments also are being informed by AI. Within our teams, we're really being purposeful about how we use AI in our day-to-day for efficiencies, productivity and making sure that we're sharing use cases across the teams.
