Understanding Audiences How do you understand audiences? Mass media have typically used several approaches to defining their target audience Researchers use for rough baseline: Demographic categories Psychographic categories Researchers employ Survey research Focus groups In-depth surveys Personal interviews Other tools

Broad categories Demographics Psychographics

Demographics Demographics are the quantifiable statistics of a given population. Demography is used in public opinion polling and marketing. Demographics tell you about audience members for a medium using characteristics that can be aggregated across those individuals in a numerical fashion using categories.

Demographic Criteria include: Sex Age Race Education Religion Political affiliation Media use habits Economic status and/or income Size of family Marital status Geographic location, etc.

Why are demographics so important? The bottom line: The funding that indirectly drives many media industries is based on advertisers purchasing time or space to get a message to the most desirable audience for a product – or the “demographic” with the most income or influence. Knowing about and finding the right demographic for a program or product equals $$$.

Demographic resources Interested in demographic data from the U.S. Census reports? Visit the U.S. Census Bureau. ( U.S. Census Bureau. American Factfinder: jsf/pages/index.xhtml jsf/pages/index.xhtml

Demographic resources Google it and also use other search engines. You may have access to database systems that will link you to specific articles or studies on your target audience.

Demographic resources Starch Research and Roper Media is one leading research firm using demographic analyses. Visit their website html for a look at how firms do proprietary research on audiences for clients in many fields. Also Roper: Starch Research and Roper Media htmlhttp://

Demographic resources Sophisticated tools for analysis of audiences on the Internet (such as “digital media audience ratings ” combining demographics, trend information and reach, frequency and duration of visits to webpages) are available for businesses at professional-level charges through companies like Comscore and others. (

Demographic resources You may be familiar with the special way the television industry measures audiences in "ratings" and "shares" using in-home systems and viewing diaries to indicate when a TV is turned on and to what program. The Nielsen ratings provide English and Hispanic audience estimates for broadcast and cable networks, television stations, local cable systems, syndicators, program producers, advertisers and advertising agencies.Nielsen ratings ntent-is-king-but-viewing-habits-vary-by- demographic.html ntent-is-king-but-viewing-habits-vary-by- demographic.html

Why use demographics? A company that sells high-end RVs would want to know roughly how many people are at or nearing retirement age, and also what percentage of them will be able to afford the product. This information will help the company to decide how much capital to allocate to production and advertising.

Other demographics resources The Boro or better: quickfacts or u.s. census website or consumer expenditure survey The Boroquickfactsconsumer expenditure survey A great resource: Advertising Age (once you have a job) Advertising Age With social media and Internet: Analytics

Demographic partitions

Demographics For MTSU: student profilestudent profile Are demographics useful? Problem with demographics is it reduces everyone to a cultural stereotype

Psychographics: Another layer of understanding VALS, Claritas, Tapestry Proprietary

Psychographics Researchers analyze the psychological make-up, or "what goes on inside people's heads) to gain more insight into value systems. This study, often a specialty of polling and attitudinal research firms, is called psychographics. Some proprietary systems like Claritas (Prizm segments) use both demographic and psychographic information and structure their reports on audiences on a geographic basis as well with their PRIZM approach. Recent innovations, such a on-line focus groups, have entered the market also (more on these later).Claritas

Difference – weight loss Demographic Information: Male Aged Married, with children Dealing with issues of weight gain, diabetes, lack of energy Household income $100K+ Psychographic Information: Concerned with health and appearance Wants a healthy lifestyle, but has little time Enjoys going online in the evenings Tends to favor quality over economy Values time with a small group of friends

Psychographics Psychographic studies gather information about lifestyles, activities, attitudes, motivation. It's much harder to gather and analyze this kind of information than it is to gather demographic information, so most of the psychographic studies are developed by private companies for paying clients. However, the categories developed in the most famous of these studies, the VALS system, provide you with a useful tool and a different framework for thinking about audience members.

Psychographics VALS (Values and Lifestyles) is a consumer psychographic system developed by SRI International. It classifies consumers into eight categories based on extensive testing, and segments the groups based on their self-orientation (to principles, status or action) and their resources (from the least to the most). Look at the segmentation chart for a complete description of the eight categories. VALS (Values and Lifestyles) Tapestry segmentation: pages/tapestryhttp:// pages/tapestry

How to get psychographics 1. pay for them – Prizm, VALS, Tapestry, etc. 2. use your social media accounts to see preferences 3. interview – what they did over the weekend, if they have seen any good movies lately (no? you’re more of a TV or online entertainment fan?), found any great holiday deals, made any New Year’s resolutions? (if small populations you can use focus groups, etc.) 4. observe your customers and listen