Advertising I Want to Watch

posted by greg…….

It should be obvious by now that as a society we are moving more and more toward niche interests and pursuits, made possibly by communication and information technologies and fueled partly by targeted content and programming (as well as our own self interests).

An eMarketer article by David Hallerman, The Death of Mass Marketing, talks about how advertising is affected by this movement, saying that “mass-market advertising is no longer as viable as it was in broadcast television’s heyday,” that “the internet has multiplied audience fragmentation far beyond what cable has done to the broadcast networks,” and “the hundreds — if not thousands — of niche markets found online not only create the need for greater ad targeting to reach the splintered audience, but all those niches make targeting more feasible, too.”

Not only do niches make targeting more feasible, but more importantly, it presents an opportunity to make the message more relevant and remove the stigma of advertising as an intrusive annoyance. As a cycling aficionado, I’m interested in all things bike riding, and I am genuinely interested in related product and service information. And that should be the goal of targeting – to serve up advertising that people want to receive.