The Mass Media Myth

Continuing my series based on Roy Williams article about Advertising Oversimplified with my thoughts on points 2 and 3…

Roy talks about Mass Media and targeting your advertising message:

They call it “mass media” for a reason: it reaches the masses. Consequently, you can’t really target using mass media. (TV, radio, billboards)

But don’t worry about that. Use mass media anyway. Targeting is overrated and ridiculously overpriced.

I just got my hands on the latest ratings for radio listenership and I’m going to use that to prove Roy wrong.

Sort of.

Since I have my hands in both the traditional mass media and the new digital media worlds, I know a thing or two because I’ve seen a thing or two, (to borrow the tag line from Farmers Insurance ads.)

I’m going to clear up some misconceptions about targeted digital ads first.

The people selling you these highly targeted ads are liars. Most of them don’t know they are lying because they don’t dig deep enough to see who those targeted ads are really going to.  When I sold them, I only dug deep enough to see the good stuff, but when I looked deeper, below the surface, I pretty much stopped selling targeted digital ads.

Why?  Because all the targeting and algorithms and “stuff” just wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

For example, when I examined the response rate of a targeted campaign and saw where we were getting clicks and somewhere from locations that we did NOT target, I started to see the cracks in the not-so-perfect world of targeted digital ads.

Heck you probably have seen so-called targeted ads when you are online, maybe playing a game on your phone and you keep getting ads for dog food which you’ll never buy because you don’t own a dog.  True story.  That was my story recently.  You probably can come up with your own now that I’ve pointed this out to you.

So the alternative to digital ads that are targeted is to use mass media, as Roy mentioned.

Mass media reaches the masses.

In the most recent radio rating survey for Metropolitan Fort Wayne, Indiana, they listed the area has a population of 460,900 people age 12 and older. The radio station with the most weekly listeners had 141,202 listeners. while the station with the smallest audience had 4,936 weekly listeners.

That’s a huge difference.

However there is more to the story than just the number of listeners.  Each station has a format that attracts fans as listeners and those fans/listeners have characteristics about them.  The station with the largest audience is mine, WOWO radio with a news and talk format. Also in the top 10 are a Pop Music Station, a Country Music Station, a Rock Music station, a Public Broadcasting station,  a Contemporary Christian Music station,  a Classic Hits Music station, a Soft Pop/Rock Music station, a Hip-Hop Music station and a Classic Rock Music station.

That’s just the top 10 of 29 stations that had enough listeners to get mentioned in the Spring Rating period.  There are also another dozen stations in the area that didn’t make it because their weekly audiences are even smaller.

The point is that each of these radio stations have an audience that you can target with your advertising simply by advertising on the stations that have the target listeners that you want to invite to your business.

You can target with mass media.

I’ll even give you a deeper example that I have with my station, WOWO.

We just launched a new weekly feature and a new weekend talk show that is focused on health news.

My friend Lee Kelso, whom I’ve known since we were in our early 20’s, is now WOWO radio’s health news correspondent.

WOWO radio’s audience of 140,000+  has less than 1,000 teenagers and less than 7,000 18 to 24 year olds.

That means 95% of WOWO’s audience is age 25 and older.

When we reach the age of 45, our interest in health and well being increase significantly compared to when we were in our 20’s.

WOWO’s audience of people age 45 and older is 70% of our listeners.

Once a week on Tuesday Mornings at 7:10, Lee Kelso reports with his 5 minute HealthCall feature during Fort Wayne’s Morning News with Kayla Blakeslee.  Lee also does another report on Health most Thursday afternoons during a segment on the Pat Miller Program also on WOWO Radio.   Our news department also uses Lee’s stories in their regular newscasts.  

All of this HealthCall stuff that Lee Kelso does during the week reaches the masses of people who listen to WOWO each week.

That’s one way we’ve combined mass media with a targeted message matched with an audience that has a significant number of listeners who are interested in the targeted health messages.

But wait, there’s more…

We have now launched an hour long Saturday morning talk show called, you guessed it: HealthCall Live! 

Hosted by Lee Kelso, HealthCall Live features interviews with health care professionals and listeners call in and ask the doctors questions.

The Saturday HealthCall Live radio show on WOWO is very targeted.  If you don’t care about health, then you’ll find something else to listen to during that hour.  But if a doctor or health care practice wants to target their message directly to the people they want to serve, this is it.

See, mass media, when used properly can also be targeted media if you work with someone who knows how all this works.

(That’s me, waving my hand.)

Want to know more?  Contact me: Scott@WOWO.com