Unit 4, 5 and 62 – Audience ResearchBefore going into any planning or filming it is important for me to gain an understanding of who my target audience is as I will need to make the video appropriate for them, for example, if I was advertising to quite an elderly crowd I wouldn’t really use face passed music and quite an urban theme, etc.

The age range of my target audience is quite an easy one to indicate as everyone who is looking to attend Sixth Form College are most probably around 16-20 years old. This is quite an easy audience to advertise to as the age range isn’t too wide and they all have fairly similar interests due to factors such as social networking, sports, etc. The majority of the audience which I will be advertising to are students who are continuing studies from high school to sixth form which means the main age I will reaching out to is probably 16 years of age.

The gender of my target audience is a mixture of both male and female, as media studies isn’t really a specific course for a gender, therefore I don’t really need to worry about making my video suitable for a certain gender, it will be for both.

The socio-economic grouping for my target audience is most likely the bottom category of the grouping as the majority of the audience I am advertising to are just leaving school to continue their studies, therefore they’ll have little to no working experience. However some of the audience which I am advertising to may be retaking their studies in sixth form, or they may have took a gap year in between studies to gain some working experience, students around therefore they may fall into category 6 (Semi-routine occupations) or category 7 (Routine Occupations).

The location of my target audience is quite an obvious factor which I know as someone who lives in London, for example, wouldn’t really travel all the way to Manchester every day to go to college. Therefore the location of my target audience is Manchester and maybe just out of Manchester depending on their travel methods. I would only be advertising to people that are local to the college.

BARB:Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB) is a data gathering agency. They are involved with the measuring of TV viewings and channel tune ins throughout the UK. They collect their data by placing a measuring box in certain individuals homes who have approved of, currently they have boxes in 5,100 homes in the UK which equals approximately 11,500 pupils, the box records the programs they watch, the readings are then sent to the TV stations for them to analyse. The UK population is 58,789,194, which means that each BARB user represents over 5,000 people.

BARB numbers indicate how much a TV station is paid, the higher the number readings the more the station is paid and obviously the lower the reading the less they’re paid. This payment is from the advertising agency which the TV station is linked to.

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