HA3 Task 8 - Audience Classification

Audience Classification

There are a range of techniques that are used to classify audiences for the TV advertising industry. This is referred to as 'Audience Profiling'. By researching their audience beforehand, a researcher can ensure that an advertiser puts across the right message to the viewing audience. It might include details like age, sex, educational qualification, work experience, financial background, field of work, interests, mood, orientation, bias, food habits, religious background, physique, health condition etc. As it depends on what is being researched, how much detail is applied to the research can vary. 

Demographics

A common and traditional method of audience profiling is known as demographics.Demographics means a small subgroup of a society that can be used to put them into categories. Demographic trends are also important, as the size of different demographic groups will change over time as a result of economic, cultural and political circumstances. Characteristics of demographic research include age, gender, ethnicity, orientation, job and location. The NRS social grades are a system of demographic classification used in the United Kingdom. They were originally developed by the National Readership Survey to classify readers, but are now used by many other organisations for wider applications and have become a standard for market research. The social grades were created and developed over 50 years ago and are still used to compare classes today.

Psychographics

Psychographics means describing an audience by looking at their behaviour and personality traits. It goes more in-depth than normal demographics. Psychographics labels a particular type of person and makes an assessment about their viewing and spending habits. A more detailed look into people involves looking at their personality, values, opinions, attitudes, interests and lifestyles. This type of research is based on the assumption that the types of products and brands on individual purchases will reflect that persons characteristics and patterns of living.The advertising agency Young and Rubican invented a successful psychographic profile known as their 4C’s Marketing Model, which stands for Cross Cultural Consumer Characterisation. This allows people to select what they think about themselves, therefore identify their characteristics and personality:

A small table detailing a few differences between demographics and psychographics, showing the main differences between the two.

Geodemographics

Geodemographics is the process of analyzing survey data of a specific geographical area to profile economic and demographic characteristics of population living there. It is commonly used for marketing and advertising strategies. It will analyze where various people live and how viewing decisions between locations change. This is because people living in crowded council estates would probably watch different things than people who own their own house in an upmarket area. Geodemographic systems estimate the most probable characteristics of people based on the combined profile of all people living in a small area near a particular address. Geodemographics can also work in conjunction with psychographics and class systems. This is because some areas will typically be more upmarket, with more expensive house whilst other will consist of council houses and high rise flats. So, the class and personality traits will most likely differ greatly. 

An example of the types of houses in a location in Great Britain: