IDC Revision

Week 3 · Ofir Richman

Lecture 3 — Audience, Personas & Media Types

  • #digital-marketing
  • #lecture
  • #class-slides
  • #poem
  • #media-metrics
  • #personas
  • #audience

Lecture 3 — Audience, Personas & Media Types

Part of: Digital Marketing Topic 3 — POEM Media, Acquisition Metrics & Audience Definition · In-class slide deck (Ofir Richman, 2026B) Key concepts: POEM, CPM, CPC, PPC, CPA, CTR, Word of Mouth, UGC, Touchpoint, Target Population, Personas

About this note

This reconstructs the in-class deck, which is slide-heavy and light on text — many slides are a title over a photo, a chart title, or a stock illustration, so the meaning came from Ofir's narration in the room. Where a slide carried real text (the POEM definitions, the acquisition-glossary cards, the worked campaign table, the persona sheets) it's reproduced faithfully. Where a slide was only an image, logo or diagram, the explanation is reconstructed from standard marketing theory and flagged with a "reconstructed" note. Frameworks like POEM, demographics/psychographics, the generations and personas are established theory and are explained in full; the specific figures below are only ever the ones printed on a slide. Use this as a study scaffold, not a verbatim transcript.

TL;DR

The lecture moves in three arcs. (1) POEM — the split of all media into Paid, Owned and Earned, with a mini-history of paid media (the 1994 AT&T banner onward) and the mechanics of earned media (WOM and UGC). (2) Media-acquisition metrics — CPM, CPC/PPC, CPA as three ways to buy, a "what's best? it depends" trade-off grid, and a worked $1,000 campaign that runs impressions → CTR → conversions → CPA. (3) Who you're talking to — defining the Target Population by demographics + psychographics, the generations (Y, Z, Alpha), touchpoints (Ipsos/IPA), and personas that turn a dry segment into a real human and thereby set every campaign decision. It closes by teeing up the campaign strategy that Digital Marketing Lecture 4 builds out.

Recap slides at the top

The deck opens by re-running the Digital Marketing Lecture 2 fundamentals — what marketing covers, the 4P's → 4C's shift, the high-value features model, and later the market rings (penetrated / target / qualified-available / available / potential). Those are owned by Lecture 2; this note doesn't re-explain them, it builds on them.

Part 1 — POEM: Paid, Owned & Earned media

The organising idea for the whole media landscape is POEM — every channel you can use falls into one of three types by who controls it and who pays. The deck draws it as three nested bands (Earned around Paid around Owned).

Owned media

From the slide

OWNED media = a channel you control.

Owned media is any channel the brand itself owns and operates: your website, your app, your email/newsletter list, your own social profiles (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, X, YouTube, Snapchat pages), your WhatsApp/iMessage broadcast, even your physical assets (the shopping-trolley slide). No media cost per exposure, full control of the message — but reach is capped at the audience you have already gathered.

From the slide

PAID media = when you pay to leverage a third-party channel. Media distributed by a paid resource.

Paid media is renting someone else's audience: search and display ads (Google AdWords, the Google Display Network), social ads across every platform, native units (Taboola, Playbuzz), and traditional buys (TV, radio, press, outdoor). You buy reach you don't own; the moment you stop paying, the exposure stops.

Paid-media history (from the deck)
  • 1994 — the first banner ad took over the Web: 468 × 60 pixels, advertiser AT&T ("Have you ever clicked your mouse right HERE? YOU WILL").
  • 2002 — the first Google AdWords.
  • 2005 — the first YouTube ad.
  • 2007 — the first Facebook ad.

The arc is the story of paid digital media maturing from a novelty banner into the search-and-social ad machines that now fund Google and Meta.

Earned media

From the slide

EARNED media = when customers become the channel (mention, share, UGC). Media distributed by WOM (word of mouth) / discussion. Built through engagement — conversion, sharing. Distributed and even produced by brand enthusiasts.

Earned media is the coverage and conversation you earn rather than buy: press pickups, shares, reviews, mentions, memes. Its two engines are:

  • Word of Mouth — people talking about you to each other; the oldest and most trusted form of promotion.
  • UGC (user-generated content) — customers and fans producing the content themselves (mentions, shares, reviews, remixes). When brand enthusiasts make and spread the content, the brand's own cost is zero and the credibility is high.

The deck's worked example is the "Jar of Nutella floats in space" clip — a TikTok moment that got picked up by TV morning news (KTLA): one organic event, amplified across earned channels with no ad spend. Earned media can't be bought directly, only provoked — usually by a strong story placed in the right medium (which is why the deck pins Earned media to story × cross-platform, McLuhan's "the medium is the message" recap from Digital Marketing Lecture 2).

POEM at a glance
Type Who controls it Who pays Examples
Paid third party you (per exposure) Google/Meta ads, GDN, Taboola, TV/radio/outdoor
Owned you you (build/run) website, app, email list, your social profiles
Earned customers / press nobody (you earn it) WOM, UGC, shares, reviews, press pickups

Part 2 — Media-acquisition metrics

Once you buy paid media, you pay against one of three models. The deck's "media acquisition glossary" cards define each, then a trade-off grid says which suits which goal.

The three buying models

The acquisition glossary (from the slides)
Metric Definition Buys you…
CPM Cost Per Mille (per thousand) = cost of displaying your content to 1,000 unique users Brand awareness / eyeballs
CPC / PPC Cost Per Click = cost of every unique user clicking your ad / post Traffic
CPA Cost Per Action = cost of every unique user performing your pre-designated goal (video watch, lead, share, comment, forward…) Engagement / conversion

The ladder is deliberate: CPM pays for a view, CPC pays only when they click, CPA pays only when they do the thing you actually wanted. As you move down the ladder you pay for outcomes closer to the sale — so the price per unit rises, but so does the quality of what you're buying.

CTR — Click Through Rate

From the slide

CTR = Click Through Rate (Hebrew on slide: אחוז הקלקה) — the share of people who saw the ad and clicked it.

CTR=clicksimpressions\text{CTR} = \dfrac{\text{clicks}}{\text{impressions}}  (as a %, ×100)

CTR is the hinge between the top of the ladder (impressions) and everything below (clicks, then actions). A high CTR means the creative and targeting are earning the click; a low one means you're paying for views that don't convert.

What's best? "It depends"

The trade-off grid (from the slide)
CPM CPC CPA
CTR low medium depends on desired action
Conversion low high high
Engagement low medium high
Pricing low medium high
ROI low low high

The teaching point: there is no single best model — it depends on the campaign goal. CPM is cheap per unit and right when you only need eyeballs (awareness), but its conversion and ROI are low. CPA is expensive per unit but its conversion, engagement and ROI are high — you only pay when the outcome happens. CPC sits in the middle: good for driving traffic.

Worked example — a $1,000 campaign

"Campaigns at a budget of $1,000 over 30 days" (worked on the slide)
Line Value Working
Campaign budget $1,000 —
Overall impressions (users who viewed the ad) 500,000 —
CPM $2 $1,000 ÷ 500,000 × 1,000 = $2 per 1,000 views
Clicks on ad 10,000 users who clicked the ad / link
CTR 2% 10,000 ÷ 500,000 = 0.02 = 2%
Leads provided 5,000 users who filled the form on the landing page
Conversion rate 1% 5,000 ÷ 500,000 = 0.01 = 1%
Cost per Action (CPA) $0.20 $1,000 ÷ 5,000 = $0.20 per conversion

The deck visualises this as nested circles — 500,000 impressions on the outside, 10,000 clicks inside that, 5,000 leads inside that — the funnel narrowing at each step. Two things to note for the exam: CPM here is computed against impressions, but conversion rate is also taken against impressions (5,000 ÷ 500,000), not against clicks; and CPA is budget ÷ actions ($1,000 ÷ 5,000), the single number that tells you what each real outcome cost you.

Watch the denominators

The slide computes conversion rate = leads ÷ impressions (1%), not leads ÷ clicks (which would be 50%). Use whichever base the question specifies — mixing them up is the classic trap in a campaign-calculation MCQ.

Part 3 — Who are we talking to?

Before you pick platforms or write creative, you define who the campaign is for. The deck is careful with wording: it's a target population, not an "audience" — what defines the group we aim to reach or serve, and who are my customers and why would they buy?

Target Population = Demographics + Psychographics

Defining the target population (from the slides)

A target population is defined along two axes:

Demographics — who they are Psychographics — what drives them
Age Needs
Income Interests
Educational attainment Activities
Employment status Attitudes
Location Values
… Social graphs / friends, personal passions …

Demographics are the observable, census-style facts (age, income, education, employment, location). Psychographics are the internal drivers (needs, interests, activities, attitudes, values, the people they know). Two people with identical demographics can behave completely differently once you know their psychographics — which is why good targeting needs both.

The generations

The generational map (ThoughtCo slide, oldest → youngest)
Generation Born
G.I. Generation 1900–1924
Traditionalists / Silent 1925–1945
Baby Boomers 1946–1964
Gen X ("Thirteeners") 1965–1979
Millennials / Gen Y 1980–late 90s ← highlighted
Gen Z / iGen / Centennials late 90s–2010s ← highlighted

The deck zooms in on the youngest three:

  • Gen Y / Millennials — "constantly connected, need to be discovered." Tech-savvy (two screens at once); friends and social networks are particularly influential; communicate by text; curators and sharers.
  • Gen Z — "the Snapchat generation." Native to TikTok, Snapchat, WhatsApp voice notes. Properties: moving from 2 to 5 screens; selective rather than excessive; creators and collaborators; visual, vocal, short, independent, stubborn, always in a rush. Motivations: enjoying life, finding a great job, becoming a better person, self-expression.
  • Gen Alpha (from ~2010) — the first fully touchscreen-native cohort (the toddler-with-a-phone slide), whose formative years overlapped COVID and remote schooling (the child on a Zoom class slide). The deck flags this as an open question ("Gen Alpha + COVID?") rather than a set of fixed traits — reconstructed as: media habits still forming, but screen-first from birth.
Why the generations matter

Each cohort lives on different platforms and consumes media differently — so the generation you're targeting narrows both the channel and the format before you've written a word of copy. (The teen-usage charts earlier in the deck — YouTube and TikTok dominating daily use — are the evidence base; described here at chart-title level.)

Touchpoints (Ipsos / IPA)

Beyond demographics, you can define a population by how it actually consumes media — its touchpoints. The deck cites the Ipsos TouchPoints Questionnaire (2022) and the IPA, a large diary-style survey of what people watch, listen to, read and do.

Touchpoints — the six dimensions (IPA, from the slide)

Each media moment is logged against: Where · With whom · Activities · Media · Emotions · Mood

The 2022 questionnaire covered sections from Viewing, Listening, Podcasting and News to Shopping, Gaming, Word-of-Mouth and Demographics — the point being that a rich picture of media consumption in context (not just demographics) is what lets you meet the right person, in the right place, in the right mood. The Statista slide ("Digital advertising touchpoints in the U.S., Dec 2024") ranks where people encounter ads — social media, video-streaming and video portals at the top — described here at chart-title level.

Personas

A persona turns a statistical segment into a single believable person — "you're not selling to a statistic, but a real human being."

Persona components (from the slide)

A persona is built from four blocks: Demographics · Psychographics · Activities · Media habits

Fleshed out (the "Customer Discovery" slides), that means knowledge, norms, values, schedule plus location, concerns and current needs — a rounded portrait, not a data row.

The three example personas in the deck
  • Isaac Rice — Freelancer. 29, in a relationship, video producer, California. High IT/software proficiency; goal: collect and deliver huge media files fast and showcase a portfolio online; pain: travelling to clients, slow uploads, file-size limits; brands: Dropbox, Google Drive, Vimeo, WeTransfer, YouTube.
  • Drew — Influencer. 25–34, $50–75k, high tech proficiency; frequent event-goer; motivated to discover and share new things, have influence, be first, grab tickets instantly; pain: finding time and staying on budget.
  • Mary Taylor — 26, Brooklyn, student/waitress, newly married and expecting; heavy internet/social/online-shopping user; want: design her new apartment ("I want a living room like in Pinterest photos, but I need guidance"); favourite brands: Nike, ASOS, Netflix, Apple.

Each is a specific human with goals, pains and brands — which is exactly what makes the segment actionable.

The persona drives every campaign decision

"Persona determines the campaign essentials" (from the slide)

The persona sits at the centre and dictates six things:

Decision Set by the persona because…
Platforms you go where this person already is
Creative & storytelling the story has to speak to their values and language
Content & frequency how much and how often they want to hear from you
Scheduling when they are actually reachable (their day/week rhythm)
Offerings & pricing strategy what they will pay and how (persona ≥ product — Diet Coke vs Coke Zero split the same drink across two personas)
Research & development what to build next for them

The deck illustrates persona-led strategy with the celebrity-meal era (McDonald's BTS Meal, Travis Scott Meal) and the Diet Coke vs Coke Zero split — the same zero-calorie cola marketed to two different personas. It also shows ChatGPT drafting personas for Diet Coke ("Diana, 35, marketing manager") and Coke Zero ("Alex, 35, software engineer") — a nod to AI as a persona-drafting tool, with the caption "Not so fast…" flagging that the AI output is a starting point, not a finished, grounded persona.

Personas and market segments — Kotler (2000)

Adapted from Kotler (2000) — from the diagram

Market segments and personas are related but different:

  • A market segment always has demographics and may have a segment size & value and a set of skills/attitudes/behaviours — it's a group defined from the outside.
  • A persona always has demographics, skills/attitudes/behaviours and mental models & goals, and — in context — a pathway to purchase, learning expectations, needs & wants — it's an individual portrait defined from the inside.

So a persona is not a replacement for segmentation; it's the human face you put on a segment so the campaign decisions above become concrete. (Reconstructed reading of the hub-and-spoke Kotler diagram — the slide showed the node labels and "always have / may have / in context" links.)

Exam takeaways

What this lecture sets up for the past papers
  • Media-buying models — CPM / CPC / CPA (and CPL = cost per lead as a CPA variant): know what each pays for — views, clicks, actions — and that price/quality rise down that ladder. This shows up as an MCQ in 2024 Exam B1.
  • CTR = clicks ÷ impressions. Be ready to compute it, and to run the full impressions → CTR → conversion → CPA chain from the worked example. Watch which denominator the question uses.
  • CPM vs CPC vs CPA trade-off: CPM for awareness (low ROI), CPA for conversion (high ROI) — "it depends on the goal."
  • Target population = demographics + psychographics — and it's a population, not an "audience."
  • Penetrated vs target market (recap from Digital Marketing Lecture 2) also appears as an MCQ — see 2024 Exam B1.
  • Persona ≥ product: one product, several personas (Diet Coke vs Coke Zero); the persona sets platforms, creative, content/frequency, scheduling, pricing and R&D.