Blog 6 - Audience Information

When it comes to advertising, the audience are studied very carefully so that advertisers understand how they are meant to sell the product to that audience.

The audience is very important though out the media. It is the audience that buy the product so it is very important that you can catch their attention with the advert that gets shown. All media texts are made with an audience in mind, theses are the people who will receive it and make some sort of sense out of it. Usually, but not always, the producers can make some money out of the audience. There for it is important to understand what happens when a audience "meets" a media text.

when describing and defining the target audience, you need to know who you would like your audience to be, you could have more than one distinct audience with different needs. Describing your target audience does not have to be a difficult task, Think of a ideal audience member then think about their occupations, gender, interests, technological expertise then begin to think about the categories they fall into. Your target audience may even fall into a group such as student in full-time education, retired people or people who travel aboard on holiday. 

Audience engagement describes how an audience interacts with a media text. Different people react in different ways to the same advert. Some people may find some adverts amusing when some other people may not.

Audience Expectations are the advance ideas an audience may have about a media text/product. This applies to series adverts such as "go compare" or "specsaver". Sometimes advertisers challenge the audiences expectations. This can be seen in in the "Iceland" adverts.

When a television advert is being planned, the most important question the producers have to think about is "what is the target audience?" If no one is going to want to watch or buy the product then it was all a waste of time. Audience research is a major part of any media company's work. They use questionnaires, focus groups, and comparisons to existing media products and spend a great deal of time and money finding out who potential customers are and how they can 'appeal' to them.

Adverting is a serious business. TV advertisers need to know their target audience. In particular:

• Income bracket/Status
• age
• gender
• race
• location

Measuring an audience is important to all media institutions. Research is done at all stages of production of a media text, and, once produced, audience will be continually monitored.

One common way of describing audience is to use a letter code show their income bracket:
A. Top management, bankers, lawyers, doctors and other highly payed professionals.
B. Middle management, teachers, many 'creatives' such as graphic designers.
C. Office spectators, junior mangers, nurses, specialist clerical staff ect.
D. skilled workers, trades-persons (white collar)
E. Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers (blue collar)
F. Unemployed, students, pensioners, casual works.

Psychopathic is the study of personality, value, attitude, interests and lifestyles. This area of research focuses on:
 Interests,
Activities,
Opinions,
Hence psychopathic factors are also called IAO Variables.

Geodemographic segmentation is based on two simple principles:
1. People who live in the same neighbourhood are more likely to have similar characteristics the two people chosen at random.
2. Neighbourhoods can be categorised in terms characteristics of the population which they contain. Any two neighbourhoods can be placed in the same category, i.e, they contain similar types of people, even though they are widely separated.

Once they know the income/status, age, gender, race, location of their potential audience, media producters can began to shape their adverts to appeal to a target audience with known reading/viewing and listening habits.

Once the advert had been produced, it is important to make sure your target audience to see it.