Target Audience

What is a target audience?

In marketing and advertising a target audience is a specific group of people within the target market at which a product or the marketing message of the product is aimed at.

For example Classical Music is aimed towards a small minority of people mainly those who are older and seek something relaxing where as Pop Music is of a larger target audience and is more targeted towards youth.

The term target audience is a very important concept to media as media texts are made with an audience in mind. When a media text is being constructed a key question to consider is 'Does it have an audience?' if the answer is 'no' then there is no point in taking the media to a further stage. If no one is going to watch/read/play/buy the media text, the producers aren't going to make any money out of the product, and this is why audience research is a major part to the development of a target audience. 

Media companies use questionnaires and comparisons to existing media texts and also spend a great deal of time and money finding out if there is anyone out there who will be interested in their idea.