Kantar said that while age can be a useful starting point, no age group was homogeneous, and that many common myths about the behaviour of certain age groups could be perpetuated.

The findings are based on the report Beyond Age, which uses Kantar’s TGI surveys of more than 24,000 adults a year across Great Britain as well as more globally focused versions of the surveys.

Kantar said the example of baby products showed the benefit of segmenting based on life experience, as targeting based on age alone showed that 25- to 34-year-olds in western Europe are 2.5 times more likely to have bought nappies in the past year than the average consumer. 

However, segmenting the audience based on people who have had a child in the past 12 months gave an index 10 times greater than the average adult – a four-fold increase in targeting efficiency.

The report also examined how people use online platforms as they get older, with people over-65 being the fastest growing group of weekly users across major social and communications apps in Britain between 2015 and 2021.

Over-65s are now Facebook’s largest age cohort, Kantar said, growing from 6% of users in 2015 to 19% in 2022.  

Gary Brown, lead analyst and author of Kantar TGI’s Beyond Age report, said: “The marketing and advertising industry has to challenge tired assumptions or risk missing out on huge opportunities.

“Generational tags have become a shorthand for segmenting millions of people, but this often leads to one-dimensional stereotypes like the flat-white-loving Millennial or property-rich Boomer.

“These labels just don’t reflect the diversity of different people’s life experiences and habits within age cohorts.”