The Big Head v The Long Tail

TV executives seem to be struggling to reconcile their online and offline viewers. NBC has introduced Total Audience Measurement Index, a smart move, but one that may yet demean their true audience delivery. Many broadcasters I deal with are longing for a way to achieve similar metrics.

The result remains that media companies are obsessed with delivering large overall audiences, not valuable specific, audiences. All this type of metrics do is to reinforce another nail in the coffin of traditional media and leave long tail companies like Google to laugh all the way to the bank as they charge ever higher prices for one to one marketing.

It pains me to see so many intelligent people loosing their fingernails as they hang on to a model that has long passed away.

Comments

phoneranger said…
I always thought fathead was more descriptive....that said the large media companies aren't pushing their appeal to big audiences just because that's what they can do (or used to be able to do). Brand advertisers are in a similar quandary. They can market to a single fathead; they have no idea what to do with a hundred or a thousand longtails.