The marketing industry's preoccupation with Gen Z may be a cliché, but it's also rooted in reality.

According to UN data, Gen Z makes up around a third of the world’s population and, in the USA, the average 25-year-old has an annual household income more than 50% higher than baby boomers at the same age1.

So, not only do Gen Z represent the next generation of consumers, many are here and ready to buy today.

As the first generation to have grown up on the user-generated web, Gen Z naturally turns to social media platforms and messaging apps to connect with family and friends. It also shapes their experience of culture and is increasingly where they look to shop too.

As we see in the wider shift to short-form video consumption, Gen Z can be a harbinger of usage for older generations too.

In order to help marketers understand how to connect, leverage culture, and drive commerce with this key demographic, we thus partnered with BAMM Global to explore the social media habits and motivations of 18- to 24-year-olds in Brazil, Germany, Japan, the UK and the USA via a mix of qualitative and quantitative research.

This is what we found:

Today's sophisticated automotive marketers want to understand the impact Meta ads have in driving both their sales and brand KPIs, using Mixed Media Modeling (MMM). To help answer this question, Meta commissioned a custom marketing mix study with Nielsen using two years of syndicated media, sales, brand consideration and favorability data across five top automakers (representing 60% of the US car market).

The goal was to understand:

How do Meta ads impact sales and brand KPIs when compared to other channels?

Which strategies within Meta ads are more efficient than others?

How do Meta ads drive both short and long term ROAS?

In this two-part study, we first quantified the impact of media in driving short term car sales and then the impact on brand metrics. The combined findings of both the Sales and Brand MMM quantify both short term and long term impact of various strategies on Meta in driving car sales.

Key findings of the study

1. Most advertisers were significantly underinvested on Meta.