Consumer research and flexible media have allowed manufacturers and service-delivery firms to target mass marketing towards especially receptive groups, generally divided in terms of age, gender, class and race.

Age remains the most noticeable division, as producers seek to appeal to demographics known for high disposable income, for example teenagers for movies, music and clothes, adults for automobiles and household goods, or older ages for retirement, travel, insurance and pharmaceuticals. Families also constitute an advertising target for minivans and vacations in Disneyworld. These strategies, however, entail both advertising and placement—CBS draws an older audience, for example, while Reader’s Digest reaches the same group.

This identification of buyers implies divisions of class as well: advertisements in the elite New Yorker or Forbes differ from those in tabloid newspapers. Similarly information on television and movie appeal allow for both commercial sponsorship and product placement that associates brand names with lifestyles. Catalog delivery in elite postal zones provides a constant measure of status differences in consumption.

Niches are also defined by gender, evident in ads that posit women as domestic decision-makers (i.e. food, laundry and appliances, etc.). By contrast, advertisements for trucks, alcohol and cigars evoke masculine images of ruggedness, independence or sophistication. Gay marketing is relatively recent, but gay periodicals have begun to package their clients in terms of both sexuality and disposable income, as well as offering “gay voyeur” ads open to multiple interpretations.

Race has proven more controversial: while television shows and magazines allow African American companies to target black consumers, neighborhood groups have also decried billboards and advertisements pushing cigarettes and alcohol within inner-city neighborhoods, spurring grassroots opposition in cities Baltimore. Ethnic marketing has not been so clearly defined within American assimilationism, although catalogs and travel agencies evoke nostalgic identification for Irish, Germans, Italians, etc. New immigrants who constitute distinct language or transnational communities, however, are reached through mass media like Spanish newspapers, cable stations and mail solicitations like those that offer special phone rates for calls to Hong Kong or Taiwan.

Niche marketing is perceived as a threat not only because of its general divisiveness, but because of the way it links mass media products to ever narrower segments of the population. Hence, “family” films or teen flicks replace movies of interest to diverse populations. Electronic printing and Internet sales, however, have permitted websites that adapt to individual shopping patterns or catalogs tailored to previous purchases— mass marketing for individuals.