Marketers today are faced with a daunting task: making sense of an increasingly fragmented media landscape in an atmosphere where audience- and customer-centricity is key. MarketingCharts’ newly-released 4th annual “US Media Audience Demographics” report provides high-quality data for decision-makers, offering strategic insights into the changing demographics of media audiences today.
The study sizes up the media landscape, then delves into the age, income and racial/ethnic composition of several media types in 3 sections: traditional; digital; and social media.
Some highlights from the study, which is available for purchase here, follow.
Traditional Media
- While traditional TV and radio continue to have the broadest reach among US adults, people under the age of 45 are now more likely to watch streaming/downloaded video than traditional TV.
- Although the broadcast and cable TV audiences are both “graying,” cable is more likely to attract an affluent viewer and has above-average Black adult representation.
- Unlike other traditional media, terrestrial radio over-indexes the most in the middle-age brackets, with adults ages 35-54 almost 10% more likely than average to listen in during an average week.
- The national newspaper audience skews most towards the affluent: more than 4 in 10 readers have household incomes of at least $100k.
- Among traditional media, the local newspaper audience profiles as the oldest, with half of readers ages 55 and older.
Digital Media
- Online TV program viewers skew more towards the 18-24 demographic than internet radio listeners and newspaper or magazine site visitors.
- As with its offline audience, print maintains an affluent audience online: more than 6 in 10 visitors to magazine and newspaper websites are from higher-income households.
- Internet radio has a strong multicultural representation in its audience, proving to have particular appeal among Hispanic adults.
Social Media
- LinkedIn has the most affluent skew of the leading platforms analyzed, although a couple of others are surprisingly close.
- Snapchat not only has the highest density of young adult users of the platforms examined, but also the highest concentration of Hispanic users.
The 56-page study contains 48 charts and tables, including an array of cheat sheets comparing traditional, digital and social media across demographic groups.
The report can be purchased in 2 ways: as a PDF file containing charts and analyses ($99); or as a PDF file along with a folder containing all of the charts and underlying data ($179).
Head on over here for your copy.
