How and why do media companies define audiences?

Media companies define audiences in a number of ways. One way that companies do so is through the use of demographics. Demographics are the basic facts about a person, for example there gender, age, occupation and race. Audiences are often broken down into certain categories which use a number of these facts. For example one use on the ‘thinkbox’ website is Males aged 16-34 and Females aged 55+. They can even be put into a classing system, which uses a persons occupation to class what kind of product they would be interested in. For example someone who is in the A class (higher management, royalty) are likely to enjoy different things to someone who is in the C2 class (skilled manual workers). This give the media company the basic break down of an audience and allows them to apply what they think will appeal to that audience. This way of dividing audience is the simplest way and has some flaws. just because people share the same information,  for example a White 20 year old Male, doesn’t mean that they share the same interests, and can be leading completely different lives. However, in some consequences this would work, if you where selling a new car you would obviously know that your audience are all going to be above the age of 18. This information is quantitative.

A more advance way of dividing audiences is by using psycographic profiling. This doesn’t focus on the ‘facts’ about people but more on their views, interests, attitudes, opinions and lifestyle. The media company will look at all this information and then try to understand more about how that person may think, by doing this they will be able to manipulate their product to make it more appealing to the group that they have chosen. This type of information is qualitative 

 The best way to find out about an audience is to use both these techniques together, doing this will give you a lot of facts about that audience but also an insight into how their mind works therefore giving you a better understanding of audience when compared to using one technique alone.

Media companies will want to define their audiences in these ways because it means that they can know exactly what type of person their product will appeal to, and then focus in on that group by making it even more attractive to them. For example, if they are trying to sell a hair care product they will know to target it to Women aged between 16 and 40 who care about their appearance rather than Men aged 60 - 70. This saves the company pitching the product to the wrong people in the wrong way, boosting sales and saving money on false marketing.

A good example of the use of audience division, here is a table that shows how much advertising space is prices on ITV: