The media landscape today is often described as fragmented—the abundance of options we have as consumers to view, read, or listen to content.

For advertisers, it’s the abundance of media outlets available to deliver their message.

Consumers are no longer exposed to advertising messages only through daily newspapers or broadcast commercials—now they can go online anytime to find exactly the content they want, when they want it.

And the trend in advertising spend reflects this shift in audience attention. In 1998, 95% of advertising dollars were spent on print, radio, and television—traditional media. Research  predicts roughly 33% of the $605 billion global advertising spend will move from traditional to online media over the next three years (”Social Media/Networking.” America’s Growth Capital, Sept. 2008).

But for now, that advertising spend remains disproportionate to the time spent with each medium.          

This gap might suggest that some media types—in particular radio and online—are still perceived as more difficult and complex to plan, buy, and measure.

No One-Size Fits All

Further complicating the media buying process is the difficulty in determining which media are truly most effective in reaching a given target audience, and there’s no shortage of research and reports available to show the advantages of one medium over another.

But ultimately, the effectiveness with which a medium (broadcast, print, online) or media outlet (specific publication, radio station, website, etc.) can reach a target audience depends more on the campaign itself—advertising objectives, budget, and above all, target audience media consumption habits.

It all depends on the target audience—what channels and content are relevant to that demographic.

Different media types can be used to complement each other as well.

One study measured the impact of multi-channel advertising by looking at the combination of television and online media, demonstrating greater brand recognition and recall among people exposed to an ad in multiple mediums—30% of respondents remembered the ad after seeing it only on television, compared to 78% recall among those who saw the ad both online and on television (eBusiness Center, Dec. 2008).

Another study found that newspaper ads sent consumers online or to the store 56% of the time to research and purchase products seen in the print ads.

Ultimately, there will never be a one-size-fits-all medium that reaches 100% of the target audience 100% of the time.

An integrated, multi-channel advertising campaign has the greatest potential for reaching a specific audience with enough frequency to drive action. Results.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 at 5:13 pm and is filed under Advertising, Media Buying, Multi-Channel, Planning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.