The slow death of Mass Media

40 years ago, an advertiser could spend a few million a year and reach almost 85% of the audience.
That model died before the Internet came along - 300 channels and video tapes started the trend of not being able to reach the majority of people with a small marketing budget.

Today it costs you at least $25+M for a week to reach maybe 50% of the audience. Most likely you're fooling yourself into thinking that you actually reached them. Meanwhile, they are busy on youtube, flickr, email, bittorrent, itunes and gazillion other sites. And when the computer rests next to them, they are busy watching DVD's, playing Xbox games, fast forwarding through commercials and they are very competent in avoiding you.

Sure, it's still possible to reach 85% of the market and get your brand out there. If you're new to the market and want to utilize mass media, better have your checkbook ready: It will cost up to $250 million just to get your brand really noticed.

There was once a pipedream that most of the money will move to digital media because that's where the people are. And it used to be easy because they were on Yahoo!, MSN, Google, MySpace. Even these times are ending rapidly.
The time of Internet mass reach is about to end. We saw the exodus from Friendster to MySpace to Facebook. And that's just the beginning. Mass sites will be part of each media plan but the real game is in high quality niche targeted options. Combine this with a relevant message that can be spread, linked and shared, and you have a winner on your hand.