Audience profiling involves considering various demographic and psychographic factors about a target audience in order to effectively market a new media product. Demographic factors examine attributes like age, gender, income and education level. Psychographic profiling looks at lifestyle traits, personality, values and media interests. Understanding an audience at this level allows media companies to appropriately position their brands and ensure content aligns with what the audience wants.

1. Audience Profiling
Media Studies

2. Audience Profiling
Audience Profiling is a task all media institutions need to perform
when creating a new product to launch onto the market be it a magazine,
film, album, website etc. When defining an audience, factors that must be
considered include:
Age, Gender, Race and Sexuality
Education
Occupation
Annual Income
Disposable Income
Current Lifestyle/ Aspirational or Desired Lifestyle
Culture
Media Interests
Buying Habits
Loyalty to Brands
WHY DO YOU THINK MEDIA COMPANIES NEED TO KNOW THIS
INFORMATION?

3. Demographics
A common and traditional
method of audience profiling
is known as demographics.
This defines the adult
population largely by the
work that they do. It breaks
the population down into 6
groups, and labels them by
using a letter code to describe
the income and status of the
members of each group.

4. Psychographics
This is a way of describing an audience by looking at
their behaviour and personality traits. Psychographics
labels a particular type of person and makes an
assessment about their viewing and spending habits.
The advertising agency Young and Rubican invented a
successful psychographic profile known as their 4C’s
Marketing Model stand
Cross Cultural Consumer Characterisation.
They put the audience into groups with labels that
suggest their position in society.
WHO ARE YOU?

5. NME
Consumer
Profile
Here is a reader profile for NME.
This document is updated every
quarter following market
audience research, and is
produced for advertisers in
order for them to appropriately
place their brand in a magazine
that is going to align itself with
their target audience.
Look at this profile – what
statistics/info would be of
interest to potential
advertisers?

6. Here is a reader profile written
by Mrs Moore. She has
documented lots of brands that
she aligns herself with and
then written a personal profile
using Socio-economics and
Psychographics.
You are now going to produce
your own personal Reader
profile. You need to consider
lifestyle brands but also your
media tastes, media
consumption habits, c
technology you buy into, radio
stations you listen to etc.

7. Target Audience
• For your research blog, answer the following questions to
establish who your target audience will be. Remember to
present your research in a visually interesting way!
• Also, don’t forget to use slides 2-6 to incorporate terminology
– i.e. demographic and psychographic profiling and ideology.
• Decide who in your group is going to be responsible for
drafting, designing, typing and producing results data for the
group.

8. Target Audience -
• What genre does your chosen song fall into?
• Who typically buys this genre? How do you know?
• What age group?
• Looking @ comments made on YouTube and/or established music sites, what
appears to be the likes and dislikes of your target audience regarding either or
both content and form of given music videos? (L4)
• What are the likes/dislikes of your target audience? How are these reflected in
other music videos from your chosen genre? (L4)
• How do the song’s lyrics reflect the needs, habits, preoccupation, experiences
and/or desires of your target audience? (L4)
• Does your audience prefer concept, narrative and/or performance music
videos
• Based on evidence collected, how would a concept/narrative/performance
video meet the needs of this audience? (L4)
• How would your audience describe their own attitude, values, outlook and
interest and that of their peers who share their music taste.
• What would your audience expect to see/ experience when watching a music
video of their preferred genre