MIGRAIN: Audience classification

 

Target audience profiling

Media institutions are always looking for more detailed audience profiling – so they can target their product more successfully.

These include VALS (values, attitudes and lifestyles) or Mosaic consumer classification. There's a good PDF explaining the Mosaic consumer classification here. 

Audience classification: blog tasks 

Create a new blogpost called 'Audience classification' and work through the following tasks: 

Read Media Factsheet 232 - Approaches to Studying Audiences. You'll find all our factsheets in our Media Factsheet archive: M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets. You can also access them online here if you use your Greenford Google login. Read the factsheet and answer the following questions:

1) How is audience defined in the Factsheet?

General term for all the people that consume a media product 

2) What does the infographic for Gen Z in the age of Covid-19 suggest about the media Gen Z consumes? 

This suggests that most of the media gen Z consumes is from video games and online video , and almost entirely from the internet and social media 

3) How do media companies target and measure their audience in the digital age?

Companies can use methods may it be platform, schedule or algorithm. They can see and target who their audience is and many rely on the services of other companies which tell them who their audience is, where they live and their social class, etc 

4) What did the NRS used to do and what does PAMCO do now? 

The NRS which went on from 1956 till 2018 kept track of the demographics which consumed print media and magazines, newspaper etc. Those who used it were divided into social grades depending on their job location and wealth. PAMCO absorbed NRS and does a similar thing but in even more depth, but also includes online internet media usage 

5) How are demographics and psychographics defined in the factsheet?

Demographics: Surface level information about their audience e.g: Race, Gender, Social class and region. Profession may be considered too in the company's business tactic. If a company were to use demographic information you would either use information such as generated by PAMCO or perhaps make your own broad predictions about who you would expect the audience to be if this is not available.

Psychographics is considered to be a more subtle way of categorising audiences. Rather than taking a more rigid aspect of their identity such as age, gender, social class etc, it looks at their lifestyle. Young and Rubiam first pioneered this, it decides the qualities of the consumers which may be different from raw demographics and more subtle. These are referred to as consumer categories and are based more on people's approach to life and the way they think as consumers.

Mainstreamers: A common category which most of us belong to for at least some of our consumption

Reformer: People who want to change things and who care about common causes

Succeder: Wealthy consumers who tend to buy expensive goods

Resigned: Older and conformist, enjoy predictability in their day to day existence

6) Now read the rest of the factsheet - we'll be studying these theories over the next few lessons. Choose one audience theory you think is interesting and explain why. 

Theory:One theory I find interesting is the end of audience theory. This is because in recent years this theory of mass amateurization has held true, with the decline of hollywood and rise of social media creators

2) Psychographics presentation and reflection

Reflect on what you have learned about your psychographics. Which psychographic groups do you feel best fit YOUR lifestyle and personality? Explain how and why you made your decision and provide evidence justifying this.

Reflection:I Believe the psychographic groups that best fit my lifestyle are mainstream. I made this judgement since I am gen Z and therefore most new reformist products would be targeted to my audience.