Reader profile research

A reader profile is list of qualities and traits which the average reader of a magazine has. This includes information about the social economic class of your readers, the average age range of the readers, how many people purchase the magazine and how many people read the magazine each month.

 Companies produce reader profiles to allow their marketing teams to see where to advertise and sell their magazines to reach their target market. They also publish reader profiles to show to companies who wish to advertise in magazines to show what audience and how large an audience a company will be advertising to if they choose to place an advert into that magazine. 

An example of a reader profile is the reader profile of Rocksound.

In their reader profile they state they reach an average of 585,000 people each month. This will allow advertisers to judge whether it is worth placing an advert into their magazine as it may or may not reach a large enough audience. They also state they reach 150K+ people over social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. 

They state they have an audience average age range of 15-24 and 59% of which are females. They then go on to state various other facts and statistics about their audience to show how they spend their free time and their disposable income. Some examples of these statistics are Rocksounds readers spend over £210 million on music and attending gigs each year, they also spend £245 million on fashion each year. This gives other companies an insight into the sort of audience they could be advertising to. For example a band may choose to advertise about their upcoming tour or new album within Rocksound. However a company looking to advertise watches which cost in excess of £2000 would not choose to advertise within Rocksound as they would not reach their target market. 

Magazines also produce these reader profiles to allow them to look at an audiences interests and tailor their magazine towards the audiences wants and needs. For example publishing advertisements that they feel would interact with their audience such as tour posters for bands. 

http://www.slideshare.net/CrudgeRockSound/rock-sound-2012-media-pack
Link to the rocksound reader profile.