I’ll say it again: it’s all about the audience.  Your message, the medium you choose and the distribution mechanism you select is all dictated by the audience you want to reach. With the multitude of choices that make up our ever-widening media landscape, choosing the right avenue by which to reach your audience is extremely important and can make or break your campaign.

So where are these splintered audiences and how can you best reach them? There are entire books that have been written about this subject and I only have a few paragraphs, so I’ll concentrate on one demographic parameter alone: age. In future posts I’ll deal with others such as gender, income level and race.

The biggest general observation that can be made about media consumption is that online technologies are increasingly attracting all age groups, especially the younger demos, while traditional media like newspapers, magazines, radio and television continue to skew older.

Newspapers: Newspaper readership has been in a steady decline over the past decade, with only two in five reporting that they obtain their news via traditional newspaper brands on a daily basis (whether print or online). 60% of those 55+ reported reading a newspaper on a daily basis while “less than one quarter of those aged 18-34 (23%) say they read a newspaper almost every day while 17% in this age group say they never read a daily newspaper.”

Magazines: The average age of magazine readers is now 45 at the same time that ad pages continue their downward trend.

Radio (AM/FM): Listenership is declining in the 12-17 age demo, while 86% of those above the age of seventeen still listen to radio.

Television: Although the median age is now 51, two years older than the coveted 18-49 demo, television is still the broadcast medium of choice for reaching a mass audience. However, the numbers speak volumes about the viewership habits of the newer generations. The 55+ age group spent approximately 60% more time watching television than the 18-24 demo.

Internet Video: The 18-24 age group spends the most time watching video online, three times as much as those aged 65+ and almost twice as much as those in the 45-54 age group.

Internet Radio: According to the NPD Group, more than half of teens (52 percent) listened to online radio in 2008, compared to just 34 percent in 2007 and in a study conducted by Big Research, it’s clear that the percentage of users listening to radio online decreases as age increases, with almost three times as many listeners in the 18-24 age group as there are in the 55+ age group.

Instant Messaging & Text Messaging: There are almost twice as many users of instant messaging in the 18-24 age group as there are in the over 55 age group. And from the same chart you can see that use of text messaging is overwhelmingly a youth activity.

Blogs: Those aged 18-24 comprise the largest group reading blogs and compared to those 55 and over, there are almost three times as many of them.

Social Networks: This is where things get fascinating, especially as it concerns the largest social network out there, Facebook. In an interesting analysis by Peter Corbett, head of iStrategyLabs, he reports that “Facebook’s 35-54 year old demographic segment not only continued to grow the fastest, but it accelerated to a 276.4% growth rate over the past six months. That demo is DOUBLING roughly every two months.” Additionally, the second fastest growing age group on Facebook is the 55+ group. In another, more comprehensive analysis on the Royal Pingdom Blog, it’s clear that those in the 25-54 age group comprise the bulk of social network users.

My next post will be about gender differences in the usage of these media.

Image courtesy: http://www.ny3d.org/2008/03/