Macrotargeting is the application of consumer or business-to-business targeting data to segmentable mass media. When you break this definition into component terms none them are futuristic. However the media industry is currently cascading into its golden age because two important disciplines have reached critical mass.
1. Data analytics. The information age has spawned innumerous consumer segments. Standard demographics such as age and household income seem oversimplified by advanced psychographics which, in turn, can be rendered irrelevant by behavioral targeting.
2. Mass media can be highly segmented. For demonstration purposes let's look at the internet, television and newspapers. The internet, as a segmentable mass medium, stands alone. By this summer Canoe Ventures says it will be offering cable network targeting into two national "zones". Two national zones is practically meaningless from an indexing standpoint. Heck, there are 210 spot DMAs. Canoe is exciting because it's now one step closer to household addressability. Besides, there is scaled television segmentation today. Marketers can create over 2,000 national geographic segments via cable MSO zones. And from the ashes of the newspaper industry will likely rise a scaled aggregator of journalistic content with a customizable, digital edition capability. This model will create millions of daily editions. Millions.
The leverage of large scale content aggregation (divided by) highly targeted segmentation = Macrotargeting. To the data analysts go the spoils.
Comments