A post on Collective Intellect about mass market vs. niche market contains some very interesting information. To wit:
Last night at the Colorado chapter of the Business Marketing Association, I listened to Matt Preschern,
a VP of Communications for IBM, talk about the digital convergence of
marketing. He started off his presentation with a focus I appreciated
-- how much smaller, more niche audiences are (the lead in to talking
about targeting markets in a narrower way for better return on
marketing).
He asked a question: In the 1950's, when I Love
Lucy was the #1 show in the US, what percentage of the US market could
an advertiser hit by advertising during the program?..
The answer is even more surprising than most marketers in the room thought:
I Love Lucy US audience reach: 45% of the US population
American Idol US audience reach: 4% of the US population
Certainly, this splintering effect on TV has been apparent for some
time, starting with the rise of cable TV. But, now that (another stat
from Matt) teens spend 40% less time watching TV than their parents, and 600% more time online than their parents, those reach stats for TV will continue to sink. Sure, you can make waves with your single Super Bowl ad, but you'll extend its power with online tie-ins, contests and viral marketing add-ons.
Anyone paying attention over the last 30 years has seen this coming. Cable TV offered mass marketers a challenge by splintering the ad delivery vehicle from three avenues to 300, but at least the advertising medium was still the same. The web has obliterated the mass marketers' world by not only splintering the audience but shattering the delivery medium into a variety of channels.
Back in the early days of the web when I was working on online strategy for a b-to-b newsletter publishing company I felt strongly that those companies had a strong advantage over larger, generalized publishing companies. Not that they were threatened by the available of ubiquitous information online, but they were better positioned to deal with it because they were used to producing highly specialized information for a highly targeted audience. I still think they have an advantage as long as they continue to deliver very good, very deep and very narrow information. When you're used to serving an audience of 1,000 readers that's what you do anyway. Now I think the rest of the media world is about to catch on.
