1. Sources of Information in Advertising
A client and an advertisersobjective is to promote their product to as many of their target
audience as possible – but the big question is how can they best do this? How do they
know where to place their advert, on what channel, at what time, how many times should
it run and how should this plan run alongside any other element of their campaign.
In terms of placing an advertising campaign on TV, it is the combination of research into
the target audience for your product alongside a deep understanding of the likely
audience on a particular channel and at a particular time that comes together. Television
ratings are available via Barb and collated to producers and advertisers by a range of
companies – these ratings are more than just how many people watched a programme
they also show the age, social and geodemographics of the audience. So for example, if
I want to sell a car I may choose to try and place advert on a channel that I know will be
broadcasting a car or male skewing gadget type show in a 8pm slot, as the viewers are
likely to be in my target audience, as the advertiser I may also look to the which channel
C5 and ITV for example have a slightly different social demographic too which might be
relevant in terms of the type of car – is it a Audi (expensive) or a Ford (cheaper).
Deeper analysis of the audience can fine tune advertisers decisions;
The performance in terms who watched ITV swimming show ‘Splash’s’ maybe something an
advertiser looks at before placing an advert around this show or indeed the next series (as
these things are often decided quite far in advance).
ITV 1 Splash (19:00 -20:25)
Splash Episode 2 achieved an audience of 5,405,970individuals and share of 23.47%
share for its 2ndepisode on 12th January on ITV1 ( inc +1 and HD)
The peak audience was 5,912,600 individuals and share of 24.2% at 20:10 hours.
This represents a drop from an average audience of 5,676,100 and share of 23.56%
on January 5th
The programme is very skewed to children and the younger age ranges – taking over
This example demonstrates how different programmes broadcast at the same time orthe

2. same or different channels can have difference Programme Profiles, which again
determine, based on the product’s target audience, influences where and advertiser
would want to place their commercial.
The value of different slots on television is calculated by the volume or share of
audience and perceived quality/breakdown of the audience – channels look to maintain
their share of the viewing audience and often refer to this rather than the actual number
of viewers – so a slot will have not only an average share they target but also a target
split of in terms of audience demographic eg. people aged 25-40 are deemed to be more
valuable as consumers than say an over 60 audience (as they spend more and will be
loyal to a brand for many years), an advertiser my still choose a slot that is typically older
in it’s viewership but will most likely pay less based on the broadcasters rate card of
tariffs for the different advertising time slots.
E.g. the advertising slots around X Factor will be at the very highest rate card tariff
The rate card in terms of how much an advertiser has to pay to a broadcaster per 30
second spot of advertising/time on their channel is determined by a complex
combination of viewer share and breakdown. An advertiser may choose to go for a day
time slot after an antiques shows as his product is funeral services or insurance and they
know a larger amount of people will be watching this time to whom this product will be
more relevant. The cost of the slot will be a lot lower than say a prime time 9pm slot
when the largest audience is likely to be watching but they may calculate more targeted
slots in the day time at a cheaper unit price would be better than one expensive one
after X factor! The spots around the big shows like X Factor or Britain’s Got talent are
incredibly expensive and may companies wouldn’t be able to afford even one
Advertisers will look at the bigger trends and the day to day performance of channels,
time slots in terms of share: data as shown below is available daily to help assess this:

3. Here is the graph showing the age, social grade and sex of the audience for Channel 4,
it shows that the biggest age group is 55+, the most common social grade is from A-C1,
and is shows that women are the majority audience for C4.
The information packs that the likes of Channel 4 create for advertisers list all of the
positive messages about the viewers of the channel i.e.their age/demographic/viewer
loyalty – all with the purpose of persuading adverting to advertise on C4!