The Streaming War's First Casualty: Reach
Broad reach and attention is an endangered species. 2019 and 2020 are welcoming new ad-free services like Disney+, Peacock and HBO Max, and the first casualty of the streaming wars will likely be the ability for advertisers to reach large audiences at relatively low costs.
Media fragmentation is nothing new. The industry’s been dealing with it for more than a decade, but now traditional mass reach mainstays like the television are becoming fragmented themselves as consumers sequester themselves with content that appeals to their niche interests in environments that are becoming less ad friendly or are even ad-free.
There’s bound to be a reckoning in which advertisers realize reach isn’t what it used to be. It’s less efficient. It’s less achievable. It’s less possible.
But where there’s change, there’s opportunity. That’s what has me excited. The decline in reach will inevitably lead to a rise in impact—emphasizing the effect of each impression rather than the number of impressions. That means a mindset shift for advertisers around what creative needs to achieve.
Advertisers will need to think about their messages more as invitations and less as interruptions. People don’t have to put with interruptions anymore. The tradeoff for content is becoming less about ads and more about subscriptions. Consuming ads will be a choice. Advertisers should think about everything they put into the world as an enticing invitation for consumers to opt-into, not an interruption begging for attention.
The future is anything but certain, but we do know already fragmented consumers are about to be even moreso. That means reach will be less attainable through spending, making it critical for advertisers to make more out of each impression.