1. Audience Information
When making an advertisement, it is key for the company to understand their target
audience and mould the advert around their characteristics, i.e. their demographics,
psychographics and their social grade. This makes a more effective advert, as the audience
they are aimed towards will feel more attracted to the product/company.
Audiences are often segmented in to groups, first of which is social grade, this is the single
most used variable for research purposes, and divides the population into groups based on
the occupation of the ‘Chief Income Earner’ (CIE), as such it can be seen as a socio-economic
scale. In the UK, The National Readership Survey, provides the following standardised
groupings
Social Grade Description of occupation Example
A Higher managerial, administrative
or professional
Company director
B Intermediate managerial,
administrative or professional
Middle manager
C1 Supervisory, clerical, junior
administrative or professional
C2 Skilled manual worker Plumber
D Semi- and unskilled manualworker Labourer
E State pensioner with no other
income, widows, casual and lowest
grade earners
Unemployed
Another way advertisers divide audiences is through psychographics, which is a way of
understanding how a person thinks and acts. There are seven different types of
psychographics, Resigned, Struggler, Mainstreamer, Aspirer, Succeeder, Explorer and
Reformer. And these would be used to help design an advert to make the advert most
appealing for the specific one.

2. Geodemographics are another way of understanding the audience, but in this case it is
based on the location of the audience, because the people who live in the same area are
more likely to have similar characteristics than two people chosen at random.
Demographics, which are mainly the age and sex of the audience. These are very important
as they are the crucial factors for deciding what kind of advert to make, for example an
advert aimed at a young audience will likely have more loud noises and be more colourful,
as it will keep them interested, but an advert aimed at an older audience could be more to
the point and use more complicated words.
Barbis the official source of television viewing figures in the UK. Barb viewing data give
broadcasters, advertisers and other interested parties a minute-by-minute breakdown of
viewing at regional and national levels. This information is vital in assessing how programs,
channels or advertising campaigns have performed and provides the basis for airtime
advertising. They estimate viewing patterns across all TV households be giving certain
homes a small device, each home on the panel represents on average about 5,000 TV
homes.
Audience measurement panels are key for understanding what the audience does, RAJARis
one of the biggest in the UK, and collects information on behalf of over 300 BBC and Ofcom
licensed commercial radio stations, ranging from very small local services to the national
networks. Station listening by time, duration platform (AM/FM, DAB Online/APP, and DTV)
and location (in car, at home, at work & elsewhere) is recorded and published on a quarterly

3. basis. The research is based on a continuous diary survey measuring the listening behavior
of over 100,000 adults (aged 15+) a year. The diary is filled in on quarter-hour basis for one
week’s listening drawn from a sample representative of the individual station transmission
area and the nation as a whole. Specialist research contractors carry out the fieldwork for
the research on behalf of RAJAR.The benefits of using RAJAR, are that advertisers can use
the results to better understand their target audience and possibly improve their campaign
to fit the audience or adjust to a popular trend.