Audience Economics:

Philip Napoli

Media Institutions and the Audience Marketplace

Why the dual nature of media economics

is so important?Selling the programs and

selling the people who watch the programs.

Content for specific audiences

1. The audience marketplace•Media•Advertisers•Audience Measurement Organizations

Trend: monopolization of

data services (Google)

1. The audience marketplace

•The audience product:-Predicted -Measured-Actual

2. The Predicted Audience–Measured Audience

Relationship• Testing the audience- “sample” audiences - “pilot” programs- “call-out” (radio) - “dial” testing

Problems:- Random audience

for testing (theaters)- Cable testing

audience is not representative (only 30 % of viewers subscribe to cable)

The Office TV show produced 9 seasons. This is how duplicating successful content works.

3. The Measured Audience–Actual Audience

Relationship

• Telephone recall• Coincidental

surveys• Audiometer;

paper dairies• People meter

Problems? • Vehicle exposure

versus ad exposure• Irrational

willingness to accept the measured size of the audience

“Current practice is to assume that the average-minute program audience and the average commercial

audience are the same”

4. Audience Valuation• Audience valuation affect content

strategies

• Scarcity paradox: Hard to reach audiences are more expensive

• Factors: market; demographic; media.

Is Transformers movie just a fancy car advertisement?

5. New Technologies and the Audience Product

• Audience fragmentation• Audience autonomy

Existing audience measurement systems are not able to keep up with the pace of new media environment

6. The Future of the Audience Marketplace

What might the decline in the quality of the audience product mean for the future of advertiser-supported media?

• In an increasingly fragmented, increasingly autonomous media environment, in which it will become increasingly difficult to monetize audiences, the extent to which both old and new media technologies and services will be able to support the production of original content will drop.