Audience Economics

How are audiences manufactured, valued and sold? With a focus on the electronic media (television, radio and the Internet), this text explores the unique characteristics of the audience as an economic product. It provides an integrated framework for understanding and analysing the various businesses involved in generating and selling media audiences to advertisers; introduces new research to contribute to better practice in predicting, measuring and placing economic value on media audiences; and explores how audience economics shapes media content. Philip M. Napoli introduces original research examining the process of predicting, measuring and placing economic value, focusing on four principal actors in the advertising marketplace: advertisers, media firms, audiences or consumers and audience-measurement firms, and he explains the ways in which they interact with and mutually depend on one another. The book also includes an analysis of recent developments, such as the introduction of local people meters by Nielsen Media Research and the establishment and evolution of audience-measurement systems for the Internet.

Author Biography

Philip M. Napoli is an assistant professor of communications and media management in the graduate school of business at Fordham University. He is the author of Foundations of Communications Policy: Principles and Process in the Regulation of Electronic Media.