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Do-It-Yourself Audience Research on a Shoestring

In: The Media Business for Pioneers: How to Attract Advertisers and Media Planners
Rainer Schmidt et al.
Berlin: Plural Media Services;Media in Cooperation and Transition (MiCT) (2014), pp. 86-103

Other editions: also published in Arabic

"There are many good reasons to conduct audience research. But for media producers there are two particularly important ones. By knowing your audience, you can better cater to their tastes, whether they are listeners, viewers or readers. And if the media producer is able to offer the audience better options and respond to their wishes, it follows that the circulation or viewership will likely expand. The second reason is connected to the first. Audience research is used as the basis for the sale of advertising space – whether that is the time between TV shows on a certain channel or the back page of a newspaper. Audience research allows the media producer to tell the media planner, who is going to buy that advertising space, something about their audience: WHO is using this media product? Is it younger people? Is it men or women? Is it people who didn’t go to university? And HOW do they use this media product? Do they prefer the parts about politics or would they rather have the sports reports? And WHEN are they using this media product? For example, do they use it in the morning, before or during breakfast? Or do they use it in the evening before they go to bed? This section will give media producers some guidance as to how they can answer these questions and learn something about their own audiences." (Page 86)