Why Demographics Are Not Meaningful Audience Insights
Whether you’re right or left-brained, the reality is that these days, we all have to deal with data.
We recently hosted a guest on the Content Experience Show podcast who shared some insights on audience data that I think a lot of our listeners were intrigued by. I know I was, and after talking to Phil Renaud, VP of Engineering at Affinio, I sure was motivated to start looking at our audience data in a different way.
Before I dive into what I learned from chatting with Phil, I’m going to start you off with a question. What if I told you that traditional demographic data may be causing you to miss important trends with your customers?
While you may be able to find some overlap amongst people of a certain age group, location, or gender, the fact is that not all 20-somethings, or women, or residents of a certain city care about the same things. As consumers become more protective of their data and ad blockers become more prevalent, your business needs to find more meaningful audience insights to give your customers information that they find relevant and actually want to see.
Chatting with Phil made me think of a conversation I’d had at an event. Someone had asked me, “How do you know what content is going to work at different stages of the buyer journey?” And I told them that before you’ve figured out what’s going to work, you’ve got to understand who you’re speaking to. A lot of what Phil was hitting on during our chat was exactly this — about better understanding personas, and better understanding audiences with data.
Phil began the episode by explaining how his team at Affinio creates mathematical models around how different groups are clustered or not clustered together.
“The way that we look at data is a very complex set of connections, almost like a network graph — nodes connected one to another — about how people have things in common.” — Phil Renaud
The example he shared went like this: If he and I shopped at the same grocery store, it wouldn’t mean we know each other. But, if you were to take the fact that we shop at the same grocery store, use the same type of credit card, that we have an address in the same neighborhood, both follow the same newspaper, and both listen to the same radio show, we’re getting closer to an audience cluster. Tack on other things like, whether or not he and I like the same baseball team, and you’re able to create better segments for targeting.
Of course, the real thing is a lot more complex than this, but the point is that this is how audience insights differ from demographics. This is how we can create better experiences through audience segmentation.
During the episode, Phil shared a lot of awesome insights on how some of Affinio’s film and television clients use data to determine who should star in a particular movie or show — but I’ll let you tune in for that. One thing I really wanted to share was Phil’s response to a question my co-host, Anna Hrach, asked him: How can people start to use this data to begin to make content more relevant for their audiences? How can they actually put this stuff into play?
“Pay attention to non-demographic things,” Phil said. “There are all sorts of different signals that would indicate my interest and stuff like that. But I don’t really want to be pigeon-holed into who I am…just along the equivalent of whatever I would fill out for the census, right?”
According to Phil, that kind of stuff doesn’t fly anymore. The days of targeting content based on age groups and zip codes are over. While at one point, tapping into that information would have been a goldmine for advertisers, the truth is, a lot of his bigger clients leave demographics out of targeting altogether.
If you’re interested in learning how to create audience segments, or if you’re still considering demographics when creating content, I’d recommend giving Phil’s episode of the Conex Show a listen. You’ll walk away from it ready to dig into some data and ultimately, it’ll help you create more relevant and engaging experiences.
How do you determine what content your customers really want to see? Would love to hear from you in the comments.
