Unit 6 Assignment 1 Audience Research

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvYXoyxLv64
In this assignment, I have to choose a game trailer online of a video, which I can then go on
and produce a summary explaining how advertisers define their audiences by using various
methods such as Quantitative audience researching, Qualitative audience researching and
finally audience profiling.
I have chosen to research and base this assignment around the cinematic trailer for the
World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria, Which the most popular MMORPG game of all time
and the second most sold computer / PC game of all time. A link to this trailer will be linked
above.

Quantitative Audience Research:

BARB:
Barb is short for Broadcasters audience research board and is it programme used by the BBC
for them to get a good estimate of the number of people watching their programmes. The
data that BARB gives the BBC is things like the views of each channels and the specific
programmes on that channel and also an estimate of the age range of viewers watching that
channel at the time.
The information is obtained from panels of viewers from selected television-owning
households, representative of each ITV and BBC region.
Once a household has been recruited to the BARB panel, Kantar Media fits every TV set in
the home with a meter. Software meters are also installed on laptop and desktop
computers, and tablets. In order for the meter to know who is watching, each member of
the household over the age of four is assigned a button on a special remote control. If they
enter, a room while the television is on they must press their designated button to register
their presence and press it again when they leave to show they are no longer watching.

BARB in Relation to My Chosen Trailer:

It would be hard to relate my chosen video game trailer with BARB because it is not a
television (TV) program on any of the BBC channels. If this trailer were to be broadcasted on
TV then it may just be a short advertisement of the highlights of the video game trailer
instead of the whole actual trailer because it would take up that whole advertisement break
on that channel which would cost a lot of money. According to Ofcom for every hour of
content, there is around 7 minutes of advertisements during the breaks. Most channels
have advertisement breaks every 30 minutes so that means the average advertisement
break length is around 3.5 minutes. The length of my chosen video game trailer is 3 minutes
and 52 seconds in total duration, meaning that the trailer is too long to play over a whole
advertisement break.
From researching into my chosen video game trailer in relation to TV and TV advertising I
have come across 5 videos which are shortened / highlighted versions of the game
cinematic trailer which are labelled as, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria TV Spot #1-5.
All of these TV Spots advertising the game are 31 seconds in duration, definitely short
enough to broadcasted within a TV advertisement break.

RAJAR:
RAJAR, short for (Radio Joint Audience Research) and is widely responsible for measuring
and keeping in charge of the audiences for radio stations across the whole of the UK. RAJAR
is jointly owned by the BBC and Radio centre. RAJAR was set up in 1992 to align and operate
a single audience measurement system for the UK radio industry serving both for the BBC
and licensed commercial radio stations.
RAJAR is responsible for setting the research specification, the awarding of the research
contract to third part suppliers and the overall quality control, management and delivery of
the service. The day to day operation are overseen by the chief executive and research
director.

RAJAR in Relation to My Chosen Trailer:

Since that RAJAR is in charge in responsible for the numbers and audiences within the radio
industry and that this assignment revolves around a Video game trailer which is uploaded /
broadcasted on the internet and Television. This makes RAJAR quite irrelevant because the
video game trailer which I am talking about for this assignment has nothing to do and no
connections to the radio industry.
 ABC:
ABC, (Audit Bureau of Circulation) inspire market confidence and put down a stamp of trust
with many people across the media industry such as Investors, Media owners, Media
Agencies, Rights owners, Advertisers, Managers and more! ABCs industry Stamp of Trust
underpins the way advertising is traded across the converging media landscape in the UK
and beyond. When you see the ABC logo you know that you are looking at claims you can
trust.
ABC has have two main roles to ensure every runs correctly and smoothly, both these roles
will be listed below.

The ABC offer independent audit and compliance services, delivering certification
which verifies that data and processes meet industry reporting Standards.

The ABC bring the industry together to agree measurement and process Reporting
Standards that define what counts and determine best practice. Reporting Standards
are constantly evolving to keep pace with industry developments.
Companies which are working in the areas of the media industry where ABC covers but
however are not already on the ABCs associate scheme can become affiliates. Companies
who become affiliates are companies that are seeking to develop and deliver on new
approaches to media and the media opportunities and new technologies to build a
companies use of media.

ABC in Relation to My Chosen Trailer:

ABC could have great relation and could definitely help the production and growth of
viewers and people watching / talking about the game trailer I have chosen if Blizzard
Entertainment, (the company who released the video game trailer) were a much less
experienced and smaller company. Blizzard Entertainment is a multi-Billion dollar company,
with an estimated net worth of over $15,000,000,000 ($15 Billion) and was founded on
February 8th 1991 in Irvine, California, United States. Over 26 years experienced!
Because of the size and great experience being one of the fist great video games companies,
Blizzard Entertainment will have a whole department doing exactly what ABC do which I
think is a much better decision because it keeps every under the Blizzard Entertainment
name and they can also choose the people which they want working on those tasks for
them because they will be employing those people themselves.
Qualitative Audience Research

Focus Groups:
Focus groups are pre-selected panels of people who are seen to represent the target
audience. They tend to be used by marketing and advertising agencies to test the likely
response of the target audience towards the product that is being advertised, as well as to
the advert itself, a discussion group is a group of individuals with similar interest who gather
either formally or informally to bring up ideas, solve problems or give comments. The major
approaches are in person, via conference call or website.
If you are going to use a focus group as part of your research you will need to think carefully
about who you invite to be in the group, where you will hold it, how you are going to
manage the discussion and what you will use to record what is said. For example if was to
research a focus group for my chosen subject to research I would get a group of people who
are intensely addicted to gaming and for them to discuss what keeps them playing for
example and why they thing they replace so many other things in there like with gaming etc.

Focus Groups in Relation to My Chosen Trailer:

The Focus Groups for my chosen trailer are people who play World of Warcraft mainly
because World of Warcraft is a never-ending game and Blizzard Entertainment release a
new game expansion where a new end of the games story unveils giving the players more
endless adventures and tasks to complete. Blizzard Entertainment are always looking to get
more people to start playing World of Warcraft but I strongly believe they prioritise there
existing subscribers to the game over making changes and trying to attract different types of
people to play there game.

Questionnaires:
A questionnaire is a research instrument consisting of a series of questions and other
prompts for gathering information from respondents. Although they are often designed
for statistical analysis of the responses, this is not always the case. Many companies and
organisations use questionnaires to gather information from their target audience,
sometimes to see what their audience would think about an upcoming potential change,
some questionnaires companies may do is asking simple things such as customers customer
service thoughts.
Questionnaires are very easy and cheap surveys that a company can do in comparison to
other types of surveys; this is why they are very popular and frequently used by companies
to gather information from their target audience / the public.

Questionnaires in Relation to My Chosen Trailer:

When games companies are looking to gather information from there, players / target
audience they usually create a small type of questionnaire called a Straw poll, which is a
questionnaire with usually 2-4 optional answers with also an option to switch. These Straw
Polls are usually published up on the game website and sometime even when playing the
game there are in game Straw Polls that you can go to fill out in game.
When a game take a questionnaire from there, player base asking about things such as a
potential changes that could be implemented into the game later. If the great majority of
the games player base say no to this potential change to the game then the game company
may not implement the change into the game.
I created a 8 question questionnaire in relation to video games for my class mates and
college piers to fill out so I could gather some general information about video games and
people with the same age and background as me, overall I believe the questionnaire was
very successful.
The questionnaire I created and asked people in my college class is very general questions
about the person answering the questionnaire and there generally interaction they have
with video games and other questions such as their favourite genre of video games and how
many hours a week they may spend playing video games a week. I will now do a statistical
analysis for multiple questions, which were included within my questionnaire.

Are you a casual, competitive gamer or both?

Casual Competitive Both

This question above is asking my classmate / class piers if they are a casual or competitive
gamer, or both. From all the 10 people who answered this question the results show that
seven out of the 10, 70% of the people who answered the question claim themselves as
casual gamers. A casual gamer is someone who enjoys playing games but at their own will,
they are not addicted to any games and they will often only play a few games every year
and they will may only play a small amount of hours a week in their spare time for a little bit
of fun, they are not majorly attached to the games they play and dont take it too seriously
to become the best for example.
The other 3 people / 30% of my classmates / class piers who answered this question on my
questionnaire claim that they are both, a casual and competitive gamer. This means that
they like videos games quite a lot and that they can play games in their spare time for some
fun but they also put a lot of seriousness in to a specific game quite frequently in a week
putting many hours.
I would claim myself as a casual and competitive gamer, there a number of games, which I
love to play but only one, maybe two of the games I like to play competitively. The other
games I like to play I may play when I am just relaxing late at night with friends or which I
can play in quiet.

Do you play video games on Multiplayer mode,

single player mode or both?

Multiplayer Singleplayer Both

The question above I asked my class mates / class piers if they play video games on
Multiplayer mode, single player mode or both. 5/10, 50% of the people in my class who
answered this question said that they only play video games on multiplayer mode. Most
games these days online are multiplayer games where you connect to a game server online
and most online multiplayer games you will have two teams playing against each other. It is
mostly multiplayer online game where the competition is so this question can tie in with the
previous question I talked about if my class mates were competitive video gamers or not.
2/10 or 20% of my classmates / class piers who answered this question on my video games
questionnaire said that they only like to play video games on single player mode. Most
people prefer multiplayer to single player because you are interacting with other real
human beings online. However, some people like to indulge in a video games story line in a
single player story mode and many single players like to role-play and really gain interest in
the storyline and background of the characters they are meeting and playing in the game.
The final 3/10 or 30% of my classmates / class piers who answered this question on my
questionnaire claim that they play both Multiplayer and Single play videos games. This is
what I expected from my questionnaire because I know from experience and from people
who I know that like to play a bit of both Multiplayer and Single player modes when playing
a video game.
A great example of this is when a new Call of Duty game is released the game has both a
Single player story mode and a Multiplayer mode. Most people buy the new Call of Duty and
go straight to Multiplayer mode to play with their friends and gain up the online ranks as
fast as possible. However, some people like to go and complete the single player story mode
of the game first then once complete, they then go on to play the multiplayer. I believe the
information I just gave about when the new Call of Duty games are released and the
percentage of people who go straight to multiplayer and people who go straight to singe
player is extremely accurate to how the people who answered my questionnaire, which I am
very happy to see.

What devices do you play video games on?

PC Console Mobile Other

The question above I asked my class mates / class piers what devices they play videos games
on, the options were; PC, console, Mobile and other. 50%, 5/10 of my classmates who
answered this question claim that the device they play there games on a console device,
which I believe, is very accurate since that games console are a lot more common than
gaming PCs at the moment.
30%, 3/10 of my class mates who answered this question on my questionnaire claim that
they play there video games on mobile device which did not surprise me at all since that
mobile gaming has gotten a lot more popular in the last few years because of the great
evolution of smart phones. Also a lot more games are getting uploaded to the app stores for
people to download to their smart phone in seconds to play, some old computer games
have even shut down there presence online to make their game mobile only such as Club
Penguin.
The last 20%, 2/10 of my class mates who answered this question on my questionnaire claim
that the device they play there video games on is on a PC / computer. I expected PC to be
the leave answered choice since that a lot of people dont game on their PCs and gaming
PCs are very expensive in relation to some games console like the Xbox and PlayStation. Also
in comparison to mobile gaming, a lot more people are expected to be playing video games
on the mobile phone because everybody has a mobile where they would be able to play
games on, not everybody has a gaming PC / computer to play video games on.

Face-to-Face Interviews:
An interview is a face-to-face meeting, which is usually a consultation, mainly between two
people sometimes slightly more.
Face-to-Face interview are usually a data collection method where the interviewer will
directly communicate to the respondent / interviewee in accordance with a prepared
questionnaire with a series of questions.
The face-to-face interview, also called an in-person interview, is probably the most popular
and oldest form of survey data collection. It has continued to be the best form of data
collection when one wants to minimize nonresponse and maximize the quality of the data
collected. Face-to-face interviews are often used to solicit information in projects that can
be considered very sensitive, for example, data collection on sexual behaviours. This entry
describes the advantages and disadvantages of face-to-face interviewing along with basic
operational considerations for successful interviews.

Face-to-Face Interviews in Relation to My Chosen Trailer:

I believe that there are some relevance to Face-to-Face interviews and with the company
that produced my chosen video game trailer, Blizzard Entertainment. If you live locally to
one of the Blizzard Entertainment headquarters in cities such as Shanghai, Anaheim, Cork
and Paris and you apply for a job within a department for Blizzard Entertainment then you
would go for a Face-to-Face interview.
However, it is very common for giant companies such as Blizzard Entertainment to employ
people from abroad who will then come and move to that city to work for Blizzard
Entertainment at that specific headquarter. In this case, you cannot really do a Face-to-Face
interview and this is where many of the Skype interviews, which are Face-to-Face interview
over video call on the internet are taken place.
Audience Profiling (Classification of Audiences):

Socio-Economic Status:
Socioeconomic status (SES) is an economic and sociological combined total measure of a
person's work experience and of an individual's or family's economic and social position in
relation to others, based on income, education, and occupation.
When analysing a family's SES, the household income, earners' education, and occupation
are examined, as well as combined income, whereas for an individual's SES only their own
attributes are assessed. However, SES is more commonly used to depict an economic
difference in society as a whole.
Education in higher socioeconomic families is typically stressed as much more important,
within both the household as well as the local community. In poorer areas, where food,
shelter and safety are priority, education can take a backseat. Youth audiences are
particularly at risk for many health and social problems in the United States, such
as unwanted pregnancies, drug abuse, and obesity.

Socio-Economic Status in Relation to My Chosen Trailer:

Socio-Economics can be used by Blizzard Entertainment when trying to find out a lot of
specific information about their target audience and the main audience, the audience that
are playing there game.
The only use this would bring to Blizzard Entertainment is that they would be able to see
how much their audience can afford their game and they needs to take their audiences
socio-economic status in to consideration when releasing further game expansions because
in order to keep playing theres games, the audience will have to buy them.

Psychographics:
Psychographics is the study of personality, values, opinions, attitudes, interests, and
lifestyles. Because this area of research focuses on interests, attitudes, and opinions,
psychographic factors are also called IAO variables. Psychographic studies of individuals or
communities can be valuable in the fields of marketing, demographics, opinion research,
prediction, and social research in general. They can be contrasted with demographic
variables, behavioural variables and organizational demographics variables, such as
industry, number of employees, and functional area.
Psychographics is often confused with demographics, where historical generations may be
defined both by demographics, such as the years in which a particular generation is born or
even the fertility rates of that generation's parents, but also by psychographic variables like
attitudes, personality formation, and cultural touchstones.

Psychographics in Relation to My Chosen Trailer:

I believe that Blizzard Entertainment would not have to do a Psychographics study on the
target audience and also their current audience which is currently playing there video game
because it really shouldnt matter what type of personality, interests and opinions that they
have in their personal life in order for them to play there game.
Any type of person with any type of personality, opinions and others things like there race
and origin should not matter one bit for them to be able to play there game.

Geo-Demographics:
Demographics are quantifiable characteristics of a given population. Demographic analysis
can cover whole societies, or groups defined by criteria such as education, nationality,
religion and ethnicity.
Establishing a persons disposable income can be important, particularly for advertisers who
need to target the relevant income group as precisely as possible. It is no good advertising a
top-of-the-range sports car to households that have a low disposable income.
The Demographics chart is sectioned into different sections, A, B C1, C2, D and E.
A being upper middle class and in a high managerial rolling job, all the way down to E which
is someone at the lowest levels of earnings being either a casual or the lowest grade of
worker.
Sometimes the different categories are combined to simplify the data produced. For
example, the table showing C1 and C2.

Geo-Demographics in Relation to My Chosen Trailer:

When it comes to the demographics of the people that play World of Warcraft you can see
that most of their player base is on the younger end of the line with 29% of their player base
being people between ages 16-20 years of age, 37% of their player base being aged
between 20-25, 18% 25-30, 1% 40-50 and 0.5% of World of Warcrafts player base being
over the age of 50.
I believe it is important for Blizzard Entertainment to know the Geo-Demographics of the
audience that plays there game for when releasing content and so they can see which parts
of the world there game is most popular in and also places which the game is least popular
in so they dont do things such as over stock a new game release in a country where World
of Warcraft is quite uncommon.

Age & Gender:

I believe that knowing the age of your target audience and also the average age of the
audience playing your game is very important and may determine the content in which your
company chooses to release in the future.
A companys target audience and average age audience should roughly be the same all the
time. Every now and again the average audience age may increase if something slightly
different is connected to your game or your game has started big advertisements, gathering
more people in to trying and buying the game.

Age & Gender in Relation to My Chosen Trailer:

More men play World of Warcraft than women do and I think most people would already
think that because females generally dont tend to play as much video games as males
overall in the video game industry, however there are a lot of females playing World of
Warcraft, the gender ratio of the people who play World of Warcraft is 80:20, so 20% of all
the players who play World of Warcraft to this day which is about 10 million are females,
thats around 2 million females playing this game!
I strongly believe that it is very important that Blizzard Entertainment recognise their
current audience and player bases average age and also the lowest and peak ages playing
there game but also how long they have been playing there games.
 Sexual Orientation:
Sexual orientation is an enduring pattern of romantic or sexual attraction (or a combination
of these) to persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, or to both sexes
and more than one gender. These attractions are generally subsumed
under heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality, while asexuality is sometimes
identified as the fourth category.
These categories are aspects of the more nuanced nature of sexual identity and
terminology. For example, people may use other labels, such as pansexual or polysexual, or
none at all. According to the American Psychological Association, sexual orientation "also
refers to a person's sense of identity based on those attractions, related behaviours, and
membership in a community of others who share those attractions".

Sexual Orientation in Relation to My Chosen Trailer:

I strongly believe that it really doesnt matter the sexual orientation of the players of a
game.
Blizzard Entertainment shouldnt need to know there player bases sexual orientation
because that it private information of their customers and has nothing to do if this makes
them eligible to play there game.
I think sexual orientation is completely irrelevant to the game and game trailer I have
chosen for this assignment.

Regional Identity:
In geography, regions are areas that are broadly divided by physical characteristics, human
impact characteristics, and the interaction of humanity and the environment. Geographic
regions and sub-regions are mostly described by their imprecisely defined, and sometimes
transitory boundaries, except in human geography, where jurisdiction areas such as national
borders are defined in law.
Apart from the global continental regions, there are
also hydrosphere and atmospheric regions that cover the oceans, and discrete climates
above the land and water masses of the planet. The land and water global regions are
divided into sub regions geographically bounded by large geological features that influence
large-scale ecologies, such as plains and features.
Regional identity in relation to media in general is for companies to be able to check how
many people as using a certain product more in London than in Manchester for example.
Companies such as Spotify also do Regional Identity to see where music artist most amount
of viewers / listeners are from. They are usually identified by city, such as London,
Manchester, and Mexico City etc.

Regional Identity in Relation to My Chosen Trailer:

I think that Regional identity is very important for the producers of my video game trailer,
(Blizzard Entertainment) because they need to see where all there players originate from.
I know that there is a control centre / department at the Blizzard Entertainment
headquarters and head offices in California where Blizzard Entertainment have a huge
electronic maps which cover a whole wall.
When a player logs in to their game a pin point circle flashes on the maps to show every
single persons location when they log on to their Blizzard Entertainment games. This hugely
shows how many people play there games in certain regions which could mean they could
go on to do other things such as hosting event in areas where there games are extremely
popular but also from seeing where there games are least popular they can develop some
marketing to then go and do some digital marketing and advertising in those areas to try
and get more new player from those regions to start playing their games.

Mainstream:
Mainstream is current thought that is widespread. It includes all popular culture and media
culture, typically disseminated by mass media. It is to be distinguished
from subcultures and countercultures, and at the opposite extreme are cult
followings and fringe theories.
The labels Mainstream media, or mass media, are generally applied to print publications,
such as newspapers and magazines that contain the highest readership among the public,
and to radio formats and television stations that contain the highest viewing and listener
audience, respectively. This is in contrast to various independent media, such as alternative
media newspapers, specialized magazines in various organizations and corporations, and
various electronic sources such as podcasts and blogs.
 Mainstream in Relation to My Chosen Trailer:
I believe that Blizzard Entertainment would want this video game trailer and want their
games to go mainstream so it increases the video games growth by a lot.
If theres games go mainstream, this doesnt mean that the game will lose it unique selling
points and will lose how good the game is. It would just mean that the game has become a
lot more common and then there are a huge new audience looking at the game now with
many new players looking to learn and try out the game.
Overall I think Blizzard Entertainment cannot complain if there games go mainstream
because of the huge game growth there games will have with will increase profits made
from there games, increasing the companys net worth in a whole.
The only disadvantage of a Blizzard Entertainment game going mainstream would be the
complaining from old-school players. People who have played there games for many years
and when there games were more unique and indie and will be complaining about all the
new audience which may be slightly different in comparison to the audience and people the
game has had playing for them for years.

Alternative:
Alternative media are media that differ from established or dominant types of media in
terms of their content, production, or distribution. Alternative media take many forms
including print, audio, video, and Internet and street art. Some examples include
the counter-culture zines of the 1960s, ethnic and indigenous media such as the First
People's television network in Canada and more recently online open publishing journalism
sites such as Indymedia.
Alternative media challenge the dominant beliefs and values of a culture and have been
described as counter-hegemonic by adherents of Antonio Gramsci's theory of cultural
hegemony. However, since the definition of alternative media as merely counter to the
mainstream is limiting, some approaches to the study of alternative media also address the
question of how and where these media are created, as well as the dynamic relationship
between the media and the participants that create and use them.

Alternative in Relation to My Chosen Trailer:

I do not believe that there is any use of Alternative media or any need for Alternate media
to be used when advertising a particular video games trailer that Blizzard Entertainment has
released. Blizzard Entertainment have been releasing video games since the 1990s and I do
not believe they have done anything incredibly alternative in comparison to other video
games companys advertisement techniques for their new releasing video games.
This video game trailer which Blizzard Entertainment has released advertising there newest
game expansion for their World of Warcraft game is no different to any of the other new
World of Warcraft video game expansion trailers where no uses of alternative media
techniques were used.
Therefore, I do not believe there is a need of any alternative media techniques because
there is nothing wrong with the current advertisement techniques Blizzard Entertainment
are currently using with relation to the video game trailer.

Niche:
A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focused. The
market niche defines as the product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as
well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that is intended to impact.
It is also a small market segment. For example, sports channels like ESPN and Fox
Sports target a niche of sports enthusiasts.
When creating a new companies I think it is a huge advantage going in to a niche market or
creating your own niche market because then you are creating / promoting a market in
which someone could only go to you for since that your companies is the only company in
the area that can provide that service. However, there are some disadvantages to creating
or being a part of a company, which creates or goes into the very niche market there a few
reasons.
When being or going into a niche market one disadvantage is that it could be so niche that
most of the public people will have never heard of it and another disadvantage is that it
could be such a niche market and so specialist that some people many not want to pay so
much money for such a small niche specialist service.

Niche in Relation to My Chose Trailer:

I believe that Blizzard Entertainment have been in a niche market since releasing their first
version of their games in the 1990s and early 2000s. However, with Blizzard Entertainment
they had stuck to their guns and believed in there games and had great passion for the
games they have developed for all these years and it has greatly payed off! World of
Warcraft is now the second most bought / played PC computer video game of all time!