How a leading media brand used Glaut to capture Gen Alpha and Gen Z trends

The challenge

How to capture authentic, unbiased feedback from toddlers, kids, and young teenagers?

Mondadori Media, a leading player in the Italian publishing and media industry, sought to understand entertainment preferences among kids and young adults to guide strategic investments in cartoons. The company also aimed to explore Christmas wish lists and assess the appeal of a brand character and a new animated series for children aged 3–9.

Mondadori Media has been leveraging Glaut for two years as part of an ongoing research initiative within its Licensing Talks study, conducted twice a year. This structured quantitative research includes a basket of characters defined by internal stakeholders and third-party companies subscribing to the study. Glaut is integrated within this framework to add depth to Mondadori Media’s research, capturing qualitative insights at scale.

The study was conducted using MondadoriLab, a proprietary web panel with 40,000 registered users, enabling extensive research on the Italian population. The panel is also part of the international BVA Doxa network, ensuring a structured, certified approach open to third-party research needs.

Traditional methods posed challenges in engaging young audiences effectively, particularly preschool children, who often require parental mediation in written surveys. Mondadori Media needed a more effective way to collect authentic, unbiased feedback from this demographic.

That’s where Glaut came in.

The approach

Using Glaut’s AI-powered research platform, Mondadori Media gathered insights from  +2000 participants, including children, teenagers, young adults, and parents, across Italy.

The study explored key aspects of media consumption and brand engagement across different age groups, providing a comprehensive view of how Gen Alpha and Gen Z interact with media and digital experiences. It examined favorite entertainment content, influential personalities, brand affinity, and platform usage.

A dedicated section focused on the engagement and appeal of specific animated content among children aged 3–9, a demographic often underrepresented and difficult to engage in market research. This provided valuable insights into their awareness, preferences, and content expectations.

Through AI-moderated interviews, Glaut enabled Mondadori Media to collect spontaneous, qualitative insights from kids and teens, effectively engaging them while eliminating research bias and accelerating decision-making.

The results

The data highlights an impressive reach among younger age groups, especially the youngest ones, without requiring written responses or parental mediation for preschoolers, a demographic traditionally difficult to engage in market research.

Glaut successfully gathered responses from over 1600 children aged 3-13 with an outstanding 96% completion rate, demonstrating high engagement and reliability of insights.

This demonstrates the platform’s ability to conduct AI-moderated interviews with children, overcoming common recruitment and engagement barriers.

• Broad engagement: 80% of respondents were children aged 3-13, demonstrating Glaut’s ability to capture authentic input from younger audiences.
• Deeper qualitative insights: spoken responses provided a richer understanding of children's preferences, compared to written surveys.
• Scalability and efficiency: large-scale qualitative research was conducted in 3 days, significantly accelerating the decision-making process.
• Parental mediation removed: Glaut enabled direct voice interaction with children, without relying on parents to transcribe responses.

Among the most valuable findings was the depth of insights on Christmas wish lists, offering unprecedented clarity into young consumers' desires, an area that had previously been challenging to explore at scale.

The Impact

The findings provided clear strategic direction for refining the mascot’s positioning, content, and commercial potential. By acting on these insights, decision-makers can reignite brand engagement, optimize content distribution, and unlock new revenue streams for the mascot.

By using Glaut, Mondadori was able to:

• Spot emerging trends early, gaining deep, unfiltered insights into young audiences' entertainment preferences.
• Refine content distribution strategies, identifying optimal platforms for engagement.
• Test and improve a specific cartoon before a wider rollout, ensuring the series resonates with its target viewers.
• Make data-backed decisions faster, completing large-scale qualitative research in a fraction of the time.

As a result, Mondadori can refine its content strategy by aligning storytelling elements with audience preferences, exploring new distribution opportunities, and optimizing marketing efforts to enhance engagement. With clear, actionable insights, Mondadori is now equipped to make data-driven decisions that strengthen audience connection and maximize content impact.

Bottom line

Understanding young audiences is no easy task-but with the right tools, it becomes an opportunity. Mondadori’s experience with Glaut showcases how AI-powered research can cut through assumptions and deliver insights that matter.

Curious about how Glaut can help refine your content strategy? Let’s talk.