Audience Classification

Audience research is a major part of any media company's work. They use questionnaires, focus groups, pre-film screenings and spend a great deal of time and money finding out who would be interested with their product. There are different types of research conducted, qualitative and quantitative, to gauge audience feedback.

Difference between qualitative and quantitative research.

Quantitative research is the method used when you want to know how many times or how often something happens. However, qualitative research is the method used when you want to understand why something happens.

Demographic Information
Demographic information is used in media marketing to classify an audience into age, gender, race and other categories.
In media, as in all business, demographics are used to pinpoint potential audience growth and to spot underperformance. All forms of media are targeted to certain audiences.

Demographics are broken into bands depending on peoples jobs or status - as shown below.

PsychographicsPsychographic segmentation divides the market into groups based on social class, lifestyle and personality characteristics. It is based on the assumption that the types of products and brands an individual purchases will reflect that persons characteristics and patterns of living.

 Audience Engagement 
This describes how an audience interacts with a media text. Different people react in different ways to the same text.


Audience Expectations 
These are the ideas the audience have in advance of seeing a media text. This particularly applies to genre pieces. Don't forget producers continually play with or shatter audiences expectations.