Audience Profiling

ITV

ITV – influential figure

Using ITV as a paramount institution for audience profiling, we were able to get an interpretation on ‘pioneering’ audience research and this is invaluable for us, because it gives us the opportunity to get an idea of audience trends from an existing flagship institution.

ITV Lives:

ITV LIVES focused on a massive project in order to get insight into the lives and behaviours of TV viewers within the UK. This means that ITV were able to easily get a view upon the types of demographic and psychographic audiences that view their shows, by examining their lifestyle, the brands that they engage with and then subsequently their audience’s media and technology usage.

ITV Categories:

The research by ITV gave them the information that they split their audiences into four predominant groups, because of the different attitudes and perceptions towards social media, dual screening and then new media technology. These four groups of ‘LIVES’ consisted of:• Social LIVES• Connected LIVES• Busy LIVES• Traditional LIVES

Social LIVES

This group consisted of an audience that was the smallest and the younger end of the population, though this category were shown to be the most sociable due to their interaction with modern technology as they were connected with all events in the connected world. This means that they have the balance between watching television and watching catch-up, though place a predominant focus upon using the internet to continue their interest within the ITV brand, with social networking a prevalent factor for this category.

Connected LIVES:

This group was shown to be slightly older than the aforementioned category, with this being a highly networked group also that have a focus upon using new technology. However, the category differs in the sense because tese people are mainly students and slightly older, meaning that they have the balance between using the technology and then also their adult lives. This category seeks using catch-up services as fundamental because it is extremely convenient for them, with them seeing TV as ‘the heart’ of their entertainment.

Busy LIVES:

This group formed the bulk of ‘middle’ Britain, with hectic families that are always busy being shown towards new technology by younger era’s within a family. Children will begin to introduce their families towards the new technology to give them further access, but they do not have a lot of time and therefore they are not entirely fully capable of using technology effectively. TV is important for this group because it acts as the main shared viewing between families.

Traditional LIVES:

This is the largest group of people that are placed into the older end of the population, with basically all of the television watched being through a television set itself, with barely any other technology used, with catch-up services not seen as intrinsically important for this category.

ITV as a commercial broadcaster

ITV continued their research by connoting that people could use aspects of each category, rather than just simply segmenting each person into one category, it was potentially possible that some people would fit into a range of them. Subsequently, ITV went an extra step further in order to look at how each of the groups engaged with advertising, with this being absolutely pivotal for ITV because of the fact that they are a commercial broadcaster, meaning that image is concurrent for the brand.

Fitting into more than one category

ITV were able to find that people who fitted into more than one of the categories had specific similarities: • Brands are important to all groups, but choosing

a brand differs because of the processes involved• All groups use social media, but different

categories use it differently• TV is central to people’s lives, regardless of how

they watch it• Viewers have a warmer response to content

when they are given the chance to engage with it

Conclusion:

From our research into ITV’s audience profiling, we were able to gain insight into our own kinds of audience profiling, as this allowed us to see past the simple demographic and psychographic audiences, by using 4 extra categories, in which two of them are very useful for our channel’s brand identity. We see the social LIVES and connected LIVES categories as vital for our own brand identity because this involves the types of demographic and psychographic audiences that we are aiming at, by aiming at around 18-35 because these people are typically most apt with using technology and this is supported through ITV’s research.

Ideas for Inclusion:

The audience profiling research was extremely important because this gave us the opportunity to see into the minds of the viewers, by giving us information on the audience of a brand that we see as a massive inspiration for our own identity, with ITV appearing as very similar to our own representation. We will use this audience profiling when drafting and creating our own products, conveyed primarily through the fact that we are aiming at an audience that will be entirely capable of using new media technology effectively, as we will use synergy within our products in order to cohesively market our brand successfully – by allowing active audiences to engage with our brand – as this is something that was shown to be integral by ITV’s audience research.