Dive Brief:

• According to the 34th semi-annual Piper Jaffray teen survey, spending among the age demographic is down for video games and food, but slightly up for clothing and the number of teens who expect more than half of their future videos games to be digitally downloaded jumped from 37% two years ago to 45% in the spring of 2017 and was up again for the fall report, reaching 50%, per a press release.
• Out of the teens using Snapchat, 47% report it as their preferred social media platform, up 12% year-over-year; linear TV preference is down 2% year-over-year while streaming continues to make gains; and on-demand services such as Spotify, YouTube and Apple Music are gaining share on Pandora radio, which was preferred by 35% of teens compared to 49% last year.
• Eighty-two percent of teens expect their next phone to be an iPhone, up from 81% in the spring report from this year, and the highest Piper Jaffray has ever seen in its survey, according to the press release. When it comes to shopping, 23% of teens prefer specialty retailers, down 3% year-over-year, while pure-play e-commerce is up 2% for a total of 17%. Amazon is preferred by 49% of teens as their favorite website, up 9% year-over-year. 

Dive Insight:

The report is a twice-year snapshot into the minds and habits of Gen Z, a group that has marketers as stumped as any age cohort to come along in a while. Millennials might have been the first fully digital native generation presenting certain challenges, but Gen Z has been even more challenging with its frugality and notoriously ad-averse mindset.

The Piper Jaffray report highlights that frugality with finding that overall teen spending dropped 4.4% year-over-year, video game spending inched downwards while food spending increased but still came in lower than clothing.

Another example provided by the report of how Gen Z's spending habits are impacting marketers is how some more-pricey apparel brands like Nike are seeing their influence wane while streetwear brands like Vans and Supreme are gaining. The major brands seeing the biggest decline in preference among teens are Nike, Ralph Lauren, Steve Madden, UGG, Fossil and Michael Kors. 

On the mobile front, the big takeaways from the report are that the iPhone is clearly the device of choice for teens, media consumption continues to move toward streaming and Snapchat, despite its struggles to gain a broader audience, is still the social media platform of choice for teens and is even seeing its dominance here grow.