Every aspect of our media culture seems to have us all pegged into certain kinds of target demographics. TV and radio ratings are shown for certain age and gender groups; online advertising is geared toward your search history and buying habits; print media is always throwing out the best deals and striking visuals to get to the largest amount of people that they can. So how are demographics formulated, and how are advertisers trying to target them to get to you?

 

Demographics: Painting With Broad Strokes

Advertisers form demographic profiles by basically making generalizations about certain groups of people and predicting what their behavior will be. According to Wikipedia, “The five types of demographics for marketing are age, gender, income level, race and ethnicity.” All of these aspects are taken into consideration when the kinds of advertising are being made, and where and when they’re shown.

 

Honing In On Their Targets

Advertisers make these generalizations in order to create ads that will maximize their effectiveness. They do market research – like surveys or running their own trial with a wide spectrum of people in groups – to refine what their target market is going to be. Once they have the right kind of sample based on the five factors listed above, marketing teams come up with the advertising that will cater to the buying habits of their demographics. Take, for example, the “golden” demographic: white men between the ages of 18 and 35. That group tends to have more money and buying power than other demographic groups, so TV programs like football games tend to have commercials that appeal to men in that particular group.

 

There are ways – at least online – where you can reduce the amount of targeted advertising. Limit the amount of information you have on your social networks. If you can opt out of having your email or phone number on your profiles, it won’t put you on any junk email or call lists. A little research can show you how to opt out of “cookies” on your web browser that store your browsing habits. Also, turn off auto-fill on your browser just in case your computer will be used by other people.

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