Readers of yesteryear were the ones that would actually look forward to getting a copy of the daily newspapers in their hands, sometimes having to go outside and reaching out to the stalls, acquiring them from vendors or waiting with eagerness on that delivery man that would leave some at their doors.
During that time, the printed newspapers reigned the monopoly of information. They were the most trustworthy and reliable source, the frame of reference for daily events and the best display for ads of any kind.
Consequent to the emergence of new communication technologies, readers of today receive much more information because they can check the whole world through smartphones that conveniently, find a place on the palm of their hands.
That’s to say, they don’t even have to leave their houses or wait at their doors for their daily dose of information consumption, because the news, be it textual or audio-visual, comes right to them instantly. This is a reason that explains why newspapers companies also take advantage of digital platforms to reproduce their content and offer extra content to their readers.
Now we hunt for readers, firstly identifying the age or generational segment of every digital user, then the topics that most appeal to them and the best possible schedules for content consumption, according to the social networks of their preferences.
Under an interesting exercise to discover these behaviors and preferences, the students of the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina completed an investigation to determine up until which extent the moment, the day, context and activities that people perform as daily routines influence their consumption of media information.
They managed to design a scheme about the daily consumption of the media, especially the digital section, by consulting young people between the ages of 19 and 30, and their end result established that the first accesses to Internet platforms, come the morning, pointed towards WhatsApp, Instagram and Twitter.
While those people headed to work or to school, they preferred to listen to either a radio station or Spotify. Once they arrived at their facility, they interacted more with platforms like Google, Facebook, Twitter and some digital news sites.
Back home, they also tuned with Twitter, Instagram, Spotify, YouTube, WhatsApp, Facebook or Pinterest. During lunch or break time, they committed to television or Netflix. By the afternoon and evening they’d watch TV shows or listen to background music while checking their Facebook pages via computer, alternating with WhatsApp through their phones.
At the end of the study, they produced a “media personification” template that allowed them to distinguish, within their first group, that women aged between 20 and 25 preferred Instagram; men between 20 and 30 seemed more inclined towards WhatsApp; men between 50 and 60: Google news; and women between 45 and 50: television.
The preferences of the second group, according to their socioeconomic condition and age, were found to be identical to those of the first group. With this radar, media of Argentina have more capacity to identify their “targets”, as in content consumers, and give them what they’re looking for on each of the aforementioned platforms and during their customary schedules.
– Translated from spanish by Randy Rodriguez.
Director's Thoughts 