Sure, you can ask ChatGPT, but no LLM has access to our +21 billion datapoints and insights on 8-39-year-olds. Ask YPulse AI the way you’d ask a colleague: how teens feel about buying secondhand, what’s driving thrifting in Western Europe. When we haven’t fielded something, it tells you instead of guessing, unlike most LLMs.
Answers only from our +21 billion datapoints on youth. No slop from the open internet.
Each response cites the survey data and question that produced it.
One question searches every report, article, survey data row, and brand tracker wave.
Ask YPulse AI directly, or connect your company’s LLM and ask there. Read more about YPulse MCP.
✦ Ask anything about young consumers
Social media is still the top place 13-39-year-olds say they last saw an ad that made them want to buy something: 47% of 13-17-year-olds, 50% of 18-24-year-olds, and 39% of 25-39-year-oldsAd / Marketing Effectiveness 2026
YouTube, asked about separately from social media this year, comes second at 27%, 29% and 34%. Combined, social and YouTube account for 75% of ad influence among young consumers.
Video is what drives that influence: 75% of teens and 74% of 18-24-year-olds prefer a YouTube video over a traditional commercial, and 79% of teens prefer an ad in a social media video over a photo.
Below social and YouTube, streaming service commercials follow at 16% to 21%, then music streaming and in-game ads. Worth flagging for planning: 9% of teens and 14% of 25-39-year-olds say they don’t pay attention to a brand’s marketing at all.
Top places 13-39-year-olds last saw or heard an ad that made them want to purchase something
North America · February 2026 · n=1500
Ad / Marketing Effectiveness behavioral report
Survey question, as fielded
Think of the last ad you saw or heard that made you want to purchase something. Where did you hear or see it?
Social media is where discovery happens, but YouTube drives deeper engagement and intent. Build campaigns that ladder from short-form to long-form video.
Make ads that blend into the feed. Content that looks like a regular post or something unscripted will outperform polished, obvious ads.
Prioritize video across everything. Video is consistently preferred over images, even for campaigns that would traditionally rely on posed photography.
| Q | Response | 13-17 | 18-24 | 25-39 | U.S. | CA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A100 | Social media | 47% | 50% | 39% | 44% | 46% |
| A100 | YouTube | 27% | 29% | 34% | 31% | 29% |
| A100 | Streaming service commercial | 16% | 19% | 21% | 19% | 18% |
| A100 | Music streaming ad | 17% | 13% | 13% | 14% | 15% |
Every diagnostic is written and tested for 13-39-year-olds, not borrowed from an adult tracker.
Many of our 1,200+ brands have been tracked since then, so you see movement, not a snapshot.
Age, gender, race and ethnicity, parents, gamers, LGBTQ+, region, education, and household income.
With 5,000 interviews each week, you get stable base sizes that you can rely on.
Young people don’t live in your category, so the change that hits it next year usually starts somewhere else: what they’re watching, eating, and playing. YPulse publishes a different behavioral report every week, across 40+ categories. Read your own for depth, and the ones next to it for what’s coming.
A new behavioral report lands almost every week, each on a different category.
Recurring monitors re-field annually, so the trend charts run back to 2017.
Reported for 13-17, 18-24, and 25-39, with spotlights on parents, people of color, and LGBTQ+ respondents.
Each report ships with its Excel data file, plus dashboard access and AI access.
Every trend report pairs what’s changing with young consumers with what your brand can do about it. We cover 12 trend topics a year, with brand callouts throughout each one, so your team leaves with next moves as well as findings.
Each trend ends with specific actions, like making how-to content searchable or seeding lore on Reddit months before a launch.
See how brands like Spotify, Airbnb and Netflix are responding, so you can borrow what’s working.
A TL;DR gives the full picture in minutes. The chapters back each point with survey data.
Each report ships with its Excel data file, plus dashboard and AI access.
Researching 8-12-year-olds is hard enough that almost nobody does it, which is why Gen Alpha is a blank space in most brands’ data. Tweens Insights fills it: eight reports a year on 8-12-year-olds in North America, the only syndicated read on this group.
The Studio, our custom research team, designs and manages bespoke studies of all sizes to answer your questions about Gen Alpha, Gen Z, and Millennials. Bring us an RFP or just the question, and we’ll build the research around it.
YPulse is an annual enterprise subscription. We offer two robust plans to meet your needs.
Every article, behavioral report, and trend report we publish, with the survey data and YPulse AI behind them. Use it to catch shifts in your category early and answer “what do young people think?” with a number you can source.
Everything in Prime, plus the Brand Tracker with your competitive set included. Use it to see how your brand scores against its competitors, and to ask YPulse AI about any target group you define, including cuts we haven’t published.
