The Case For Narrowcasting
This story was written by Chris Ahearn.
Chris Ahearn is president of Media at Thomson Reuters (NSDQ: TRIN). He joined Reuters in 2001 from J.P. Morgan, where he held positions in LabMorgan, the technology, media and telecommunications group, and the financial- institutions group. Prior to J.P. Morgan, he worked in the financial-institutions group at Credit Suisse First Boston.
Too often, media-industry players take the idea that "more is better" when talking about the size of their audience. Why? Because conventional wisdom is that bigger is better. The bigger your audience, the broader your reach, the more you can charge for space, time, frequency or general access. Conventional wisdom makes us feel good; but it is just that, conventional.
Our industry is drastically changing. If we are going to have a happy ending, we need to narrow the sweet spots to focus on unique needs. The spots that offer our customers valuable and unique servicesand that they will pay for. The spots where advertisers can speak to quality audience. I think of these sweet spots as narrowcasting.
The questions to ask are: Where do we add real, differentiated value? Are we growing an audience that matters, or is it just numbers? Are we getting to know them better and giving them a unique service? These questions are the same whether it's a B2C or B2B world.
In a fragmenting media world, make fragmentation your friend. Media owners have to take the same approach to advertising. Go deep, not broad. Whether endemic or not, would an advertiser rather target a new sustainable product to tens of millions general-news consumers or 5 million people who consume green news on a daily basis? It's about the audience for sure, but it's also having the opportunity to create messages that resonate with a specific group and entice them to do what you are asking.
It's ironic that in an industry where people act like the cookie monster when times are good, bemoan how unfair things are when times are tougher. Sure technologies change the playing fields, but the focus really is pretty simple love your customer by giving them something that they need and want.
By Chris Ahearn