This document discusses defining a target audience for a media studies production. It explains that media producers identify demographics like age, gender, class, and location to determine their potential audience. A target audience is the primary group a product is aimed at, which can be defined by combinations of demographic factors. Discovering the appropriate target market is an important part of market research, as it helps with developing an effective marketing strategy.

1. Target Audience
LO: To define
the target
audience of
my Media
Studies
production.
Key Words:
Age
Gender
Class
Codes
Conventions

2. Audience Basics
All media texts are made with an audience in mind; a
group of people who will receive it and make some sort
of sense out of it.
Using questionnaires, focus groups and comparisons to
existing media texts, media producers will spend a
great deal of time and money ascertaining if there is
anyone out there who might be interested in their idea.
Media producers want to know the income
bracket/status, age, gender, race and location of their
potential audience. This method of categorising is
known as demographics.

3. Audience Basics
• A target audience or target group is the primary group of people
that a product is aimed at.
• A target audience can be defined by age group, gender, marital
status etc. Examples of such audiences would be teenagers,
females, single people etc.
• Combinations of factors are often used to create target audiences
for example, males aged 16-24. Other groups, although not the
main focus, may also be interested.
• Discovering the appropriate target market for a product is one of
the most important stages involved with market research. Without
knowing the target audience selling a product can become difficult
and very expensive.

4. Audience Basics
• Demographic profiles are the characteristics of a population as used in government, marketing or opinion
research, or the demographic profiles used in such research.
• Marketers typically combine several variables to define a demographic profile. A demographic profile or
demographic provides enough information about the typical members of this group to create a picture of the
group.
• A marketer might speak of the single, female, middle-class, age 18 to 24, university educated demographic.
• Marketing researchers typically have two objectives in this regard: first to determine what segments or subgroups
exist in the overall population; and secondly to create a clear and complete picture of the characteristics of a
typical member of each of these segments.
• Once these profiles are constructed, they can be used to develop a marketing strategy and marketing plan.
• The five types of demographics in marketing are age, gender, income/class, race and
• ethnicity.

5. Demographics
In your PowerPoint you will highlight specific
demographics creating a slide explaining how each
category is targeted.
As a starting point you will discuss…
• Age
• Gender
• Class
• Race and Ethnicity
Example response…
http://www.slideshare.net/mattmosey1/my-target-audience

6. Audience Expectations
In your PowerPoint you will also have
to specify what codes and
conventions your target audience
expects to see in your film.
How will you achieve them?
Have you challenged the expectation
at all?

7. Homework: Questionnaire
For your homework you need to create
a rough questionnaire based on the
expectations of the genre of your film.
You must write 10 questions (some
may have multiple choice answers).

8. Questionnaire