Target audience

Intended or ideal recipient of a message or artistic expression

The target audience is the intended audience or readership of a publication, advertisement, or other message catered specifically to the previously intended audience. In marketing and advertising, the target audience is a particular group of consumer within the predetermined target market, identified as the targets or recipients for a particular advertisement or message. Businesses that have a wide target market will focus on a specific target audience for certain messages to send, such as The Body Shop Mother's Day advertisements, which were advertising to children as well as spouses of women, rather than the whole market which would have included the women themselves. The factors they had to consider outside of the standard marketing mix included the nutritional needs of growing children, children's knowledge and attitudes regarding nutrition, and other specialized details. This reduced their target market and provided a specific target audience to focus on. Common factors for target audiences may reduce the target market to specifics such as 'men aged 20–30 years old, living in Auckland, New Zealand' rather than 'men aged 20–30 years old'. However, just because a target audience is specialized doesn't mean the message being delivered will not be of interest and received by those outside the intended demographic. Failures of targeting a specific audience are also possible, and occur when information is incorrectly conveyed. Side effects such as a campaign backfire and 'demerit goods' are common consequences of a failed campaign. Demerit goods are goods with a negative social perception, and face the repercussions of their image being opposed to commonly accepted social values. Defining the difference between a target market and a target audience comes down to the difference between marketing and advertising. In marketing, a market is targeted by business strategies, whilst advertisements and media, such as television shows, music and print media, are more effectively used to appeal to a target audience. A potential strategy to appeal to a target audience would be advertising toys during the morning children's TV programs, rather than during the evening news broadcast.

A target market is a select group of potential or current consumers, which a business decides to aim its marketing and advertising strategies at in order to sell a product or service. Defining a 'target market' is the first stage in the marketing strategy of a business, and is a process of market segmentation. Market segmentation can be defined as the division of a market into its select groups, based on a variety of factors such as needs, characteristics and behaviours, so that the application of the marketing mix can be appropriate to the individual. Failure to identify these trends can lead to campaigns being targeted at the wrong audiences, and ultimately a loss of money or no change at all. An example of this type of failure was Chef Boyardee, who planned a campaign to appeal to teenage boys, the largest consumers of their product.

The role that social influence and persuasion play has a sizable emphasis on target audience, and how the message is developed into society. How these messages are conveyed to the target audience, plays a key role tailored to the target audience to trigger deep or shallow processing, from using the best path to persuasion. The target audience analysis process requires a tremendous amount of work, to identify the characteristics of the broad target audience, refining this audience on several dimensions. The specific conformity of the target audience to the desired supporting psychological operations objective is the product of assiduous work, mainly of the target audience analysis phase of influence process, this validates the importance of this role to the overall operation enabling decision makers, to gain substantial objectives in the information environment (Topolniski, 2013).