Mass media works really well. Micro media works mensa mensa. Why? Quite simply because the value to an advertiser decreases as the channel to viewer relationship gets closer to 1 to 1.

allow me to explain.

Advertising on mass media is an activity that is just costly enough where low quality participants are sidelined. When people see an ad in Vogue or during a College Football game, they understand that it is also being seen by 100’s of thousands (perhaps millions) of other people. The use of such a platform makes it evident that the advertiser must have a tremendous amount of faith in its product and is not afraid to spend lavishly in order to tell the world about it. This is the secret weapon of mass media which marketers and consumers rarely acknowledge. But the closer an advertiser comes to violating the internet/brain barrier, the more people realize they are being stalked. They don’t like companies harvesting the data trail they leave with almost every action and transaction, online or off. Awareness of targeting is still growing. In 2002, 1% of users were using ad blockers according to a Forester Research survey. Now, 600 Million ad block users are saying “no thanks” to “relevant” ads. The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) will soon make tracking without consent illegal. Google and Apple tracking blocker equipped browsers .. click through rates at 5 in 10,000 .. I’m sure you get it, but not everyone does:

“By bringing everything that’s good about digital to TV, we’re only making it unstoppable”, Rany Ng, Google Director of product management told Business Insider. “I believe that the future of TV is one that’s smarter—that brings together the TV content you love with the seamless experience of digital on every screen or surface,” Ng wrote in a company blog post. The Seamless experience of digital!? I know some people who would rather experience the rack. Online advertising is despised by anyone who’s ever sat with smoke coming out their ears while waiting for a website to load and then getting bombarded with banners.

Here’s how consumers think subconsciously about mass media:

1) “This Brand has spent a lot of money to run this ad. They must be a reputable company. Why else would they put themselves out there?”

2) “This Brand has spent a lot of money to run this ad. They must be confident in their ability to make the money back in sales.” 1 + 2 are examples of Signal sent by a medium.

3) “Perhaps millions of people listening/viewing/reading the same content that I do have been exposed to this ad. I am attracted to products that other people like me are attracted to.”

4) When making a routine purchase, consumers don’t have time to weight every possible cost/benefit. Advertising they’ve been exposed to provides a short cut to decision making.

5) Consumers that use a competitor’s product, are not in market, or not even in category ALL become potential customers.

6) Mass advertising creates a shared reality that goes beyond the product and its actual use.

Here’s how consumers think subconsciously about micro media: (also read: Targeted Advertising Considered Harmful). 

1) “This ad is most likely based on tracking. It could be aimed at a few people or just me. I don’t know.”

2) “How do they know so much about me anyway? Is the advertiser responsible? I’m not sure I like this.”

3) The Signal breaks down and no longer carries the same leverage it once did.

4) The Medium becomes noisy, making the motives of the advertiser unclear.

5) Building a brand by targeting narrowly defined audiences is an oxymoron.

6) People cannot express themselves through a product if nobody has heard of that product.

As a result, a Trillion dollars has been spent so far on tracking based advertising and not one brand has stood out in the process. “Precision” was to replace Mass Marketing “waste”, but over time it was proven that precision is the pitfall; the waste is what works.

When factoring in, waste, non-transparency, fraud and corruption, this form of advertising is simply unsustainable. Ironically, digital advertising stated goal was to replace the “interruption model” of advertising. TV, Radio, Print and anything that allowed “irrelevant” advertising to get in the way of the user experience was up until recently going to die. Then of course, online adverting became intrusive, annoying and untrustworthy  (Bob Hoffman, Author of Bad Men will tell you).

In a recent PageFair survey, only 3% of publishers think users will consent to “web-wide” tracking if given the option. So far, advertising online has subtracted value from the media it funds (Doc Searls).

But despite the bad news, Online Behavioral Advertising is not being muted; it’s mutated and threatens to body snatch Mass Marketing. The infrastructure that AdTech employs is coming to a TV near you! Data management and “Programmatic TV” platforms everywhere are launching efforts to target increasingly specific audiences based on samples of viewership combined with troves of consumer data. (Addressable advertising is more math than science).

There are many initiatives in the works to try and bring batch audience style targeting to Television. As per example, according to an article in Variety a new Initiative called Open A.P. was unveiled by Viacom, 21^st Century Fox and Turner. They believe “the new effort would fill a growing need as advertisers attempt to replicate the targeting and precision that worked so well with digital media in more traditional outlets.” Worked so well? You think online advertising is a creep show now? Wait until the ads consumers see on TV starts to follow us online or the banner accidentally clicked on in the morning conspicuously shows up as a :30 spot in your favorite Late News that evening. But most troubling, we may be going down a road that we can never come back from. Once consumers learn that the same techniques that underpin (and undermines) the online ad ecosystem have become part of the TV ecosystem and that broadcasts of both programming and advertising can be mutually exclusive…game over, even for big brands that don’t precision target; the wheat gets mixed in with the chaff. Our subconscious was hijacked into believing that the ads we saw online were seen by everyone. When they learned they weren’t, consumers boycotted. They didn’t like to be tracked and didn’t respect or trust the ads. What makes anybody think data and segmentation based TV advertising will work any differently? It may work for a while, but once people become hip to BTA (behavioral television advertising) .. Poof, Mass Media’s effectiveness will disappear. That big expensive ad may be just a cheap one off, even if it isn’t. According to Tim Amber and E. Ann Hollier (The Waste in Advertising is the Part That Works) “perceived expense influences perceptions of brand quality, which in turn is the most critical predictor of a participant’s inclination to purchase a brand.”

Then the real fun starts. If there’s no good method of influencing consumers at scale, then driving herds online to search and shop stalls. The only path forward will be to triple down on targeting, addressable and programmatic. The gears of mass marketing will become stripped and spin furiously. TV, which once had the best ratio of reach an effectiveness, gives way to reach and randomness. Mass Marketing as we know it implodes like a collapsing star a split second before exploding into oblivion.