An advertising post today.  On a topic that I hear from potential advertising partners.  The concept is Media Fragmentation.metrics

First let’s define it.

40 years ago, there were fewer media options for us as consumers.

The same with businesses and advertising options.  A business in Fort Wayne had  2 newspapers, a phone book 3 or 4 tv stations and maybe 8 radio stations that served our city.

Now, with the advent of F.C.C. rule changes we have 20+ radio stations.  With cable TV, hundreds of channels. The newspapers are hanging on for now, but they have only survived by operating under a joint advertising agreement and the number of readers is at an all time low based on their share of the market.

That’s the correlation that is most often used when describing fragmentation, share of the market.  We can step back in time just 10 years and see how the internet really started decreasing everyone’s share of the market, not just in media but all aspects of life.

Actually for awhile there was a contraction in choices for consumers.  Look at the small towns that had a Walmart come in and soon the small specialty stores that had been around for decades were shutting down.  Walmart was big and shiny and had low prices (and a Made in America pledge).

But now with so many options for consumers to get their news, entertainment and information, how does a business advertise with all of this media fragmentation and decreasing market share of each media?

The reality is that some advertising media options have had very little change in the last several years while others are growing and shrinking big time.

Instead of looking at the numbers as a whole for each option, look at the smaller increments.

So, instead of looking at Broadcast TV, look at how many people watch the 6pm news on channel X.  Look at the trends for the past couple of years and decide if that is a good place to place your advertising message.

My radio station, WOWO in Fort Wayne which I joined a couple years ago, has consistently had over 100,000 listeners every week for as long as I have data.  This makes it consistently the station with the most listeners in the Fort Wayne area.  Half the other stations in town have changed formats since 2013.  But most businesses would have difficulty if just 1% of our listeners became new customers every week.  So I’ll offer a smaller increment.

Instead of placing your ads anywhere during the 168 hours in a week, I’ll suggest 15 hours a week.  That’s 3 hours Monday through Friday on one of our talk shows.  With that kind of self imposed fragmenting, I can still tell 50,000 of our listeners (or more) each week about your business.

Before we leave this subject of market share and fragmentation, a quick story from 10 years ago:

I was meeting with a cranky old guy who owns a few auto repair places about advertising on our radio station. “Hank” commented that there are too many radio stations, in Fort Wayne etc. I asked him for his copy of the yellow pages.

I found the page listing radio stations and ripped it out and handed it to him.  Before he could say anything about my tearing up his phone book, I flipped to the Auto Repair section and found 20 pages filed with his competitors.  Again I tore all 20 pages out and then asked him how he is able to survive?

He was speechless for a moment over the gall I had to tear up his phone book until I handed him a new book.  And he also understood that his industry was more more fragmented and why he was losing market share each year unless he started inviting more people to do business at his shops.