There are 1,028,430 millennials in the Boston area.  The oldest of them turn 40 this year. According to The Pew Research Center, millennials comprise the generation of Americans born between 1981 and 1996.

As a consumer group, millennials account for an outsized percentage of retail spending. This generation represents 25.6% of the Boston area population but almost one-third of metro area sales. 

All in, Boston millennials are expected to ring up more than $33.9 billion in purchases during 2021.  You name it, millennials are planning to buy it.

According to Nielsen, over the next 12 months, Boston millennials will be showing up in huge numbers at auto dealerships, furniture stores, mattress stores, appliance stores, home improvement stores, and scores of other area retailers and service providers.

Every week, according to Nielsen, 88% of adult consumers tune in to a Boston radio station. This is significantly more people than watch broadcast TV, local cable, or video streaming services. It's more than use social media sites like Facebook or Instagram.  And, it's more than read local newspapers.

Boston radio is also the medium with the greatest reach among millennials, a generation that not only has embraced an abundance of online media options but also accounts for nearly a third of all local consumer spending.

This reach advantage is a crucial reason why local small business owners depend on Boston radio to market their goods and services.

A study released this week by Edison Research and NPR discovered that their six distinct types of radio listeners. The study also examines how each group of listeners engages with both programming and advertising.  These distinctions are important for Boston small business owners to understand.

The six listener categories as described in the study are:

Now is a crucial time for Boston small business owners to advertise.  

According to the Conference Board, consumer confidence has surged to 110, the highest it has been since the onset of the pandemic last March.  The index has bounced back from a low of 89.6 in February. 

Moving forward, New England business owners can expect buyer optimism to remind high.

“The recovery in consumer confidence is set to continue in the coming months, buoyed by the combination of improving health conditions and wider vaccine distribution,” said Lydia Boussour, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “This should support hearty consumer spending and pave the way for a mini-boom in economic activity this spring and summer.”

As Boston consumers gain confidence, they are expected to unleash the record $20.6-billion in personal savings amassed during the pandemic. This number is based on figures reported by Barron's in November. 

This combination of consumer confidence and the cache of cash-on-hand has led the National Retail Federation (NRF) to forecast a 7% increase in retail spending in 2021 versus last year.

To claim a significant share of the expected spending tsunami, Boston business owners plan to boost advertising investments this year.

According to Borrell Associates, a company that tracks advertising trends across the country, Boston business owners are expected to spend $3.6 billion to advertise the goods and services they sell. This represents a 6.3% increase versus last year.

In 1921, when WBZ-AM became the first radio station in Boston, many considered the medium a fad.  Even in 1937, a hit song by George Gershwin, Our Love Is Here To Stay, considered radio to be a "passing fancy and in time may go".

Boston radio, however, has survived the advent of talking-movies, television, eight tracks, and cassettes in stereo.  More recently, radio has withstood a tsunami of digital options including, YouTube, SiriusXM, Pandora, and Spotify.

As the Coronavirus pandemic rolls over into a second year, Boston radio has hung tough and not ceded its ground despite listener's shifting lifestyles.  This is crucial news for local small business owners who depend on local stations to market their goods and services.

Each week, according to Nielsen, 67% of Boston consumers watch video programs that aren't delivered over-the-air by local TV stations.  They aren't coming from a local cable company or by satellite.  Instead, these programs are being streamed directly to viewers via an internet connection.

This type of streamed video content is called OTT (Over-The-Top-Television) or CTV (Connected-Television). These two terms are sometimes are often used interchangeably but do have a subtle difference.

OTT generally means the video is watched on a small device like a computer, tablet, or smartphone.  CTV, on the other hand, typically means the content is viewed on a smart-TV or a regular television using a streaming device like a Roku or Amazon stick.

In Boston, OTT/CTV has exceeded the weekly reach of local newspapers and streaming audio services such as Pandora and Spotify. The medium is rapidly approaching the reach of local cable and broadcast TV stations.

Boston area residents will begin receiving economic stimulus checks  from the Internal Revenue Service as early as today.  In all, local consumers will receive more than $6.3 billion in payments.

This infusion of cash into the Boston economy was authorized by Congress last week in the American Rescue Plan legislation. 

The stimulus relief legislation calls for a one-time payment of $1,400 to single adults. Married couples who filed jointly will receive $2,800 total ($1,400 apiece). Families will get an additional $1,400 for each eligible dependent regardless of age. A family of four could get $5,600 in total payments. Like the second round of stimulus payments, the third round specifically prohibits payments to anyone who died before January 1, 2020.

Many of the stimulus dollars will end up in the wallets of 1.2 million Boston area homeowners. Based on research from Modernize, a leader in the home improvement and home services industry, 57% of these consumers are planning to spend all or part of their checks on home improvement projects.

Since 1921, advertising on Boston radio has helped small business owners survive and thrive during times of peril. This includes world wars, natural disasters, depressions, and recessions.

Even during a pandemic, by almost every key marketing metric, radio advertising remains the best way for a Boston business to market its goods and services.

To prove the point, here are five statistics that vividly demonstrate the value of advertising on Boston radio.

There are 2,087,000 adult women in the Boston area. Based on research from the Harvard Business Review, as a consumer group, females account for 70-80 percent of all consumer purchasing through a combination of their buying power and influence.  According to Nielsen, this will amount to between $72 billion and $82.3 billion this year.

Overall, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the US Census Bureau:

• Single women across all income brackets spend, on average, $34,817 on goods and service
• Working married women contribute over a third of their families’ incomes
• Over a quarter (29.4%) of wives earned more than their husbands in 2018, an increase from 15.9% in 1981.

Furthermore, according to research published by Forbes:

• The top homebuyers after married couples are single women (18%, double the percentage for single men at 9%).
• Women are 50% more likely than men to regularly watch online how-to videos.
• 94% of women between the ages of 15-35 spend over an hour per day shopping online.
• 70% of travel consumers are women.
• 85% of women say that if they like a brand, they will remain loyal to it.

For Boston small business owners to successfully capture a meaningful share of the local female economy requires advertising.

Boston's first radio station, WBZ-AM, began broadcasting on September 15, 1921.  The process of getting the station's programming from the studio into the home of local listeners required tall-transmitting towers with miles of underground copper wire in the middle of massive fields.

For the next 72 years, this massive investment in real estate, steel, and cooper was the only method of delivering a radio advertiser's message into the ears of Boston consumers.

In 1993, however, new technology permitted Boston radio stations to augment the reach of their tall towers by simultaneously streaming its over-the-air programming via the internet. This provided local consumers with the choice of listening to their favorite stations on their car radios, clock radios, and boom boxes or on an internet connected devices like computers, smartphones, or tablets.

Today, based on estimates from Edison Research, 11% of listening to local radio stations occurs on a streaming media device.  The ability for AM/FM to migrate from their tall towers to internet streaming allows Boston radio to reach more local consumers every week than all other media.

Radio came to Boston in September of 1921 when WBZ signed-on. The station was owned by Westinghouse Electric. The debut broadcast was from the Eastern States Exposition in Springfield, perhaps the first-ever radio-remote.

From that day, many predicted radio's success would succumb to advances from new technologies. In 1927, the challenge came from talking movies. In the 1940s, the predators were 13-inch TV sets. In the 1970s, it was 8-track and cassette tapes. In the past 20 years, there was a multi-flank attack from iPods, Zunes, YouTube, Sirius, XM, Pandora, Spotify,

So far, all of these challengers have failed. Not even a pandemic has been able to remove radio as a vital force in the life of Boston consumers.

Every week, according to Nielsen, more adults tune-in to Boston radio than watch TV or cable. Use social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram. Read newspapers. Or, stream music from Pandora or Spotify.