Marketers have long known that among most married couples, it's the female half that most often is instrumental in making key decisions regarding major appliances, furniture, and even big-ticket electronics like HD systems. That's one big reason why those sleek flatscreen sets are designed to appeal to women. But once the new DTV set is in the home, DirecTV thinks it's the male of the species that starts calling more of the shots (both literally, as in the case of March Madness basketball screams, and otherwise).
The DBS service is currently spending tens of millions of dollars to promote its growing HD services, and still plans to add its 100th HD channel by year's end. And most of its ad dollars are targeted squarely at males, according to USA Today.
DirecTV said it had been aiming at adults of both sexes in its ads, but then it examined new research that strongly suggested that males were influencing more than half of the program selections. And sports preferences were only one of the factors involved. DirecTV said its "best quality customer" is a family man in his mid-30s to mid-50s who has a better-than-average education and higher-than-average income.
Beyond DirecTV's short-term goal of offering 100 HD venues to its subs within the next several months as its satellite capacity grows, its longer-range goal is to ramp up a total of 150 HD channels by late 2008.
