# What audience intelligence tools help analysts quickly identify which channels an audience uses most so media budgets are not being allocated based on guesswork?

Wanted some insights on which Audience Intelligence Platforms help quickly identify channel affinity to inform media budget allocation. 

  1. GWI: Used to define channel targeting and mix, work out audience indexing and sizing, and forecast reach and frequency. The crosstabs and heatmap functions provide quick insights into channel preferences and audience overlap, the exact output needed before allocating media spend across channels. Analysts describe using the platform to represent research credibly and explore top-ranking media platforms for selected audiences. The speed of the platform means channel insights are accessible quickly, rather than requiring hours of data processing before an answer emerges. 
  2. StatSocial: StatSocial's specific capability of identifying which media channels and creators a target audience follows and engages with across social platforms directly addresses the channel allocation question with cross-platform behavioral data rather than survey responses. The comparison of index scores across channels per audience makes the relative channel prioritization decision explicit rather than directional. 
  3. Brandwatch Consumer Intelligence: Provides the signal volume needed to identify which channels are driving meaningful audience conversation and engagement around a brand or category, rather than relying on stated channel preferences. For categories where the audience's actual channel behavior diverges from self-reported usage, Brandwatch's behavioral approach surfaces the divergence. 
  4. Infegy Starscape: Provides source-level analysis showing where audience conversations are actually happening across social networks, forums, news, and digital media, providing a behavioral signal of channel usage that complements survey-based platform preference data. The platform supports segmentation based on conversational behavior that can reveal channel preferences not captured by stated-preference surveys. 
  5. TelmarHelixa: Built specifically for media planners who need to answer exactly this question, which channels does a target audience use most, at what index, and with what reach and frequency. The platform combines consumer survey data with digital behavioral data and media consumption data in a single interface designed for the channel allocation workflow. 

For analysts who use audience intelligence to inform media budget allocation, at what point in the process does the channel affinity data typically enter the conversation? Is it before the plan is built, or is it more often used to validate a plan that someone already had strong intuitions about?

##### Post Metadata - Posted at: 28 days ago - Author title: Marketing Executive - Net upvotes: 1 ## Comments ### Comment 1 StatSocial and Brandwatch approach this very differently, one more structured, the other more behavioral. That usually leads to slightly different answers depending on how you frame the audience. When you looked at this, did the “top channels” stay consistent across tools or vary quite a bit? ##### Comment Metadata - Posted at: 26 days ago - Author title: Writer ## Related discussions - [How well does Trello scale into a larger team?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/1-how-well-does-trello-scale-into-a-larger-team) - Posted at: about 13 years ago - Comments: 6 - [Can we please add a new section](https://www.g2.com/discussions/2-can-we-please-add-a-new-section) - Posted at: about 13 years ago - Comments: 0 - [Quantifiable benefits from implementing your CRM](https://www.g2.com/discussions/quantifiable-benefits-from-implementing-your-crm) - Posted at: about 13 years ago - Comments: 4