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The Marketing Architects
The Fragmented Media Challenge
00:22:33
44% of marketers say media fragmentation is one of their biggest concerns. But is it really threatening effectiveness—or just exposing weak planning? This week, Elena, Angela, and Rob tackle the fragmentation debate head-on. They explore why reach...
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- [00:00]
A
When marketers hear fragmentation, they start slicing the audience into smaller and smaller segments. But what they're really doing is shrinking their reach and concentrating spend on people that they may have been likely to reach anyway. And that's the opposite of what drives growth.
- [00:16]
B
Marketing Architects hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions. I'm Wayne Jasper. I run the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co hosts, Angela Voss, the CEO of Marketing Architects, and Rob DeMars, chief product architect of misfits and machines.
- [00:37]
A
Hello.
- [00:38]
B
We're back with our thoughts on some recent marketing news. Always trying to root our opinions in data research and what drives business results. Today we're talking about an increasingly popular topic in marketing effectiveness. How can marketers put effectiveness first in an increasingly fragmented media environment? I'm going to kick us off, as I always do, with some research, and today's is from an episode of the Work podcast that I listened to recently. Definitely would highly recommend that show if you like this one. And they were covering their latest content release, which was the marketer's toolkit. And in that they did some research and they found that 44% of marketers globally say media and audience fragmentation are one of their biggest concerns, second only to short termism. And they covered that in this podcast they had on Grace Kite and Tom Roach as guests and they discussed why fragmentation isn't just about more channels. It's about money moving away from these high reach environments into lots of smaller, lower attention moments. So what used to be highly concentrated in a few big placements, especially television, is now more spread out across search, social, YouTube, digital video creators, audio and platforms that demand endless versions of creative. So that's resulted in less attention per placement, less reach per channel, and a growing risk that marketing is going to become disconnected. But wasn't all doom and gloom. The research also challenged the idea that fragmentation automatically harms effectiveness. Grace Kite introduced this phrase, lots of little, which I liked. And the notion was that while individual media moments might be smaller, they can still add up to something powerful if you orchestrate them. Well, the evidence shows that channels work better together, and they do alone. We've covered that on the show before too. And that multiple small moments of attention can compound and effectiveness in a fragmented world. It depends less on chasing all these new channels and more on how can you plan smartly with the channels that you have. So the real question isn't whether, you know, is media fragmented. Answer is it is. It's how Are we as marketers going to respond to that without losing effectiveness along the way? And that's what we're going to talk about today. So I wanted to start with just this fragmentation challenge in general because I've been hearing this more and more. But, and Rob, I was curious, have you also heard this come up in conversations with brands and do you think it's a big deal right now? Is it impacting marketing effectiveness?
- [02:48]
A
I would say it's definitely a topic you hear about in conference events, et cetera, obviously podcasts, you know, media that's out there that we all consume to some degree in client conversations. My take though is it's not nearly, I think as big of a deal as people make it out to be. This is mostly a planning and buying inconvenience, but not a fundamental threat to effectiveness. I think the mistake is thinking that because media channels have multiplied, marketing suddenly needs to become highly targeted, highly personalized, and spread across endless micro placements in your ecosystem. Fragmentation doesn't change the core fact that brands grow by reaching more buyers in the category. And most categories still aren't made up of tiny, neatly segmented audiences. They're broad. And so the growth task is still penetration, which I think is part of the point that was being made on that podcast.
- [03:45]
C
Yeah, I would definitely say that fragmentation comes up all the time in my geology club, but I don't find myself talking about it a lot on a day to day basis. But you can definitely see how fragmentation doesn't necessarily kill effectiveness. It exposes whether or not you really even have a plan. So if you're in a huge big channel like television, you can get away with being pretty sloppy and still be win just by the sheer volume of how you're talking. You can't get away with that. When your media is fragmented across the whole ecosystem, you get a lot of messages that start to contradict each other or compound the fact that you aren't working from a plan. And it really exposes that you've got some orchestration work to do.
- [04:31]
B
Yeah, so it's more of a like complexity and planning and messaging than like a real threat to reaching your audience. I'll say one thing that's come up when I've heard people talking about fragmentation is there's this panic around reach declining and big moments for reaching a mass audience becoming more expensive and harder to achieve. I think that's why everyone feels like right now we're all obsessed with live sports, because that's the last. It's like the last option for reaching large audiences when there used to be these bigger viewing moments, at least that's kind of the narrative. So, Ange, I'm curious. Do you think that it is harder to, like, achieve that mass reach or just achieve reach in general today, or is that more of a planning problem?
- [05:13]
A
I mean, when you look at the data, there's no real proof that reach has disappeared in the U.S. but what has changed is that it's no longer concentrated in a few obvious places. And so that makes it feel harder, especially if you're used to planning in a linear channel by channel way. Americans are still spending enormous amounts of time with media more than they were actually. Video consumption in particular has been remarkably stable over time. It's just spread across linear TV streaming on demand, different devices, et cetera. But to your point, where things have gotten harder is just planning that reach. Well, fragmentation breaks your shortcuts, maybe that you had where you can't just buy one network or one platform and assume that you've covered the market. Reach now accrues cumulatively across channels over time, and that just requires more discipline.
- [06:06]
B
So I think TV becomes a topic of focus in this debate, which obviously we're experts in tv, so kind of love that. But it comes up because people are saying, like, what do you think of these big mass reach moments? TV comes to mind. So if reach is still our goal, what role do you think that a channel like TV should be playing when there's more fragmentation?
- [06:27]
A
Yeah, that's really TV's game, right? If there was one game in TV, it would be reaching. It's one of the few channels that can still deliver broad, relatively efficient reach very quickly. And that's exactly what that growth requires. So for any channel, the question is, does it reach lots of category buyers? For many brands, the answer is yes. And when it does, it's extremely valuable because it helps keep that brand mentally available to a broad market. But TV isn't the only Reach channel anymore, and you shouldn't treat it like it's the whole plan. The role it plays hasn't changed. It helps you get noticed by lots of people who might buy now, and that's ultimately what matters, and that's the strength of the channel.
- [07:10]
B
Yeah, I also think there's a misunderstanding too. Like, sometimes marketers think that everyone's viewing habits have become so hard to predict or gone to streaming, and really there are still really large audiences watching. Even just traditional linear tv. One side of fragmentation and the challenges behind it is media planning, media buying. How am I reaching my Audience and another side is creative. And how do you deal with all these now places? You need to have your creative shown. So Rob, creatively, what do you think fragmentation threatens?
- [07:42]
C
Did you say frogmentation? Fragmentation is a really hard word to say. Can we just call it something else like. No, like Fraggle Rock.
- [07:50]
A
Remember Fraggle Rock?
- [07:52]
C
Anyone?
- [07:53]
A
I don't know what?
- [07:53]
C
Okay. I think that creatively Fraggle Rock really impacts, you know, meaning and memory, right? When moments get tiny, when they get small and they get spread out, it's hard to really warm up your message and to explain your value proposition. It's all about how are we immediately recognizable and emotionally clear or else it just disappears for customers. So brands that struggle are the ones that are treating every execution like a new idea. And the ones that are winning are building on the same memory over and over, just in, you know, different places.
- [08:29]
B
So Grace Kite talks about that. She has that phrase, you know, lots of, let alone says it can add up to something big. But what do you think, like practically is the creative version of that idea? What does doing lots of little well actually look like in practice?
- [08:42]
C
I was just talking about like really that idea of reinvention instead of reinforcement is what hurts. And there's brands that are amazing at creating really effective ecosystems. Whether it's something that's tiny or something that's big. They just had that consistency. And I've always been a fan of Ikea for this because really, when you look across all of their channels, from print, out of home, social, long form brand films, all the way to like in store signage and instruction manuals, they really keep their ecosystem tight. They convey that practical human experience that's a little bit awkward, but, but deeply empathetic to your real life. And at home. They just do a great job of making you feel that across all their touch points, whether it's TV or it's table tents.
- [09:31]
B
So one thing that makes this tough for marketers is these platforms. And I know this firsthand just from digital advertising that we do for the agency. They do push you to constantly refresh your creative and rotate it and they warn you about ad fatigue. They encourage all these different versions. So the platforms are kind of pushing you into certain creative practices. What do you trust there? Like, do you think that that is necessary in order to have, you know, creative performance in digital? Do you think it's more like platform driven pressure or how you think marketers should approach that?
- [10:03]
C
I kind of think it's a cop out to blame the platform. Platforms want you to win, right? They win if you win, they want you to scale. They don't win if you just bet a little money and then don't come back to the casino. I'm going to actually take their side on this one and go look it. They're just saying you're creative sucks. It's, it's got fatigue and it's not working anymore. Put something new on there and then instinctually like, well, we got to go do something really big and something really new when really we should just rotation, I should say can hide fatigue but it really can't hide weak creative. So changing the creative really not the same thing as improving your creative. So I would just have people take another look at what are the assets they are testing. Is it big enough? But don't, yeah, of course the platform's going to say it ain't working, so do something new. They're optimizing to a number, but it's really the creative that's going to be driving the difference in that performance.
- [10:58]
B
Agreed. I also think it depends on your goal. Like for example, when we're running advertising for a TV agency on LinkedIn, we know that people aren't probably going to click an ad and say I want to hire as a TV agency. So if LinkedIn is showing us all your click through rates are great, you should change your creative. I'm thinking, no, we're fine, we're going to stick with, with what we've got. I think some of it also comes down to like what, what's the goal? And you're right, like these platforms, they want to push towards clicks and those types of outcomes. But yeah, you've got to think about what's also best for your brand. And when media starts to fragment, most marketers respond by we have to be on this new channel or that new channel. Like I remember when TikTok came out, everybody's freaking out, how do I get my brand on? On TikTok or more targeting? You know, we need to get more specific with who we're actually reaching. Why are those moves typically the wrong ones?
- [11:47]
A
Simply because it usually means you're reaching fewer people instead of more. When marketers hear fragmentation, they start slicing the audience into smaller and smaller segments, adding these micro channels and chasing quote unquote high intent targets. And I think that's smarter. But what they're really doing is shrinking their reach and concentrating spend on people that they may have been likely to reach anyway. And that's the opposite of what drives growth. As we talk about all the time, increased penetration by getting more category buyers to know them and buy them, that requires broad reach. And so the moment you respond to fragmentation, by narrowing targeting, you're reducing the number of buyers that you're going to reach and you're going to reduce your chance of growth. Adding more channels can also be a mistake because marketers treat it like a checklist. Okay, now we need to be on TikTok, YouTube, podcasts, influencers, retail media. But being in more places doesn't necessarily mean that you're building more reach. It often just means that your budget is getting spread more thin, your creative becomes inconsistent if you're not doing it well, to Rob's point, and your brand becomes harder to recognize and remember.
- [12:58]
B
So media is fragmenting, like we know that's true. And attention is coming in these shorter, more distributed moments. Reach and frequency is hard enough, I think, to think about for one channel. How should marketers think about it in this world of fragmentation?
- [13:13]
A
The fact that attention comes in shorter, more distributed moments doesn't change the fundamentals. People aren't sitting down to carefully process your message, as gut wrenching as that is to a marketer. They're noticing brands in passing, briefly, repeatedly across time. And that's exactly why you need to consistent branding and repeated exposure, because mental availability is built through that accumulation. But marketers often get distracted by the idea that shorter attention means they need to maybe cram more persuasion into every ad, or they need constant novelty to, to Rob's point, fight that fatigue. But that just really misunderstands how brands grow. You don't need people to pay deep attention. You need them to recognize you quickly and think of you when they're ready to buy. So that frequency is about the brand showing up repeatedly across the market over time. We know that reach trumps frequency in terms of growth. But if you obsess over eliminating any and all duplication, you also may end up under delivering frequency and weakening that those memory structures which are important as well.
- [14:26]
B
In the beginning of the show, we were talking about how this fragmentation is maybe more of like a planning challenge than actually like going to harm marketing outcomes. So from, you know, thinking as like a marketing leader from a leadership side of things, what's a planning discipline that you think maybe marketers need to bring back or apply to avoid this fragmentation just kind of turning into chaos in their plans?
- [14:50]
A
Yeah, I feel like it's pretty boring, but it's just focusing on the fundamentals, planning for that broad reach, keeping the brand distinctive. Stop mistaking complexity for something like strategy. Fragmentation turns into chaos. When leaders let planning become a collection of channel decisions and targeting tweaks instead of a simple growth plan, Most brands just need more clarity. Who are the category buyers? Are we reaching enough of them? Are we easy to recognize? Are we present consistently over time? Like those are really important questions that matter. And then too, I think leadership also needs the discipline to resist the constant push to optimize based on those short term metrics. That's where chaos can really come from. You start chasing whatever looks good this week, swapping creative, shifting budgets, adding segments, testing endless variations. And that activity might feel productive in the moment, but it often is reducing the reach and destroying your consistency over time.
- [15:50]
B
Measurement gets harder, it seems like as media fragments, even though I think a lot of these do platforms makes it feel like measurements easier. So what signals do you think marketers should look for or trust when they are looking at this holistic plan now if they have all these different channels?
- [16:06]
A
Yeah, I think when media fragments we should be trusting fewer signals that should be kind of running in the back of our heads. The signals I would advise to trust the most are the ones that are closest to those real business outcomes and least tied to a single platform. So things like sustained sales growth, penetration, looking at your share movements, even broad demand signals like search lift over time. Those aren't perfect, but they're directionally honest. They tell you whether the brand is becoming easier to choose, easier to find, not just easier to click. And I'm much more cautious and I think we all should be with highly granular platform level metrics in fragmented plans. Those metrics tend to reward that short term activation and penalize brand effects simply because brand effects take longer to show up across your business and it doesn't necessarily mean the plan isn't working. I think to your point, Elena, you're like, I don't know that short term clicks for marketing architects is what we're after. Of course we all love leads, but we need people to know who we are when they're ready to launch television. And so we can't get overly focused on those things that we perceive as immediately attributable to the business.
- [17:19]
B
Yeah, exactly. Just because you could measure it doesn't mean it's necessarily going to matter. So if marketers, they could take, you know, one thing away from this, what do you think is that thing? What's like a mindset shift they might need to make to stay effective as media fragments? And Angie, we can start with you.
- [17:35]
A
Sure. Yeah. I would say consistency will help you beat that complexity. That's in your head. Related to fragmentation. The brands that win are the ones that are going to stay coherent. They're showing up repeatedly with the same distinctive cues to as many categories as possible, as consistently as possible over time.
- [17:55]
C
If you have the big idea, the job isn't to invent more, it's to reinforce. Better to stop chasing the next idea and start building systems. You know, become a systems thinker.
- [18:08]
A
Love systems.
- [18:10]
C
I love systems. We have a podcast just about systems. Nothing to do with marketing, but just like our systems.
- [18:15]
A
Yeah, we're so boring, Rob.
- [18:17]
B
Maybe. Yeah. One thing I was thinking about is when I was thinking about, like, our. The clients we work with and ones that are most kind of successful in their marketing strategy. And I think what I personally think about fragmentation, I imagine like these brands having like a million different channels and. But I would say, correct me if I'm wrong, our most successful customers, most of their budgets going towards tv. So, like, even though, yes, like, media is fragmented, you could reach people at all these different places they're on there. Like, that doesn't mean your plan has to be overly complicated. There are still places that are better to reach people with a clearer message. So, I mean, not to just advocate for tv, but whatever that channel is for your brand. I also don't think there's anything wrong with that, with having a simpler plan, you know, simpler marketing. You don't have to get chase every new channel and be everywhere at once. I think that you can also double down on what's working because some channels do just work better than others for advertising.
- [19:16]
A
I think that's great advice.
- [19:18]
B
All right, kind of fun wrap up here for you personally. What is the most like niche media channel or content that you consume?
- [19:28]
A
There are subgroups on LinkedIn, Reddit, Facebook that probably don't make sense to reach me on. There are much easier and probably more efficient ways to reach me than knowing my, I don't know, dance mom groups or whatever you'd pay, you know, 25 to 50 CPMs for. So that would be mine.
- [19:48]
C
I was gonna do dance Mom. Apparently you took that one.
- [19:52]
A
Sorry, Rob, I, um.
- [19:54]
C
My niche one is a little creepy and I'm not sure counts. Okay, okay. I'm not sure it counts yet, but ChatGPT recently released this thing called Pulse, which is basically like reading a morning report, right? It's a media channel that's tailored exactly to me based on the searches that I've obviously done with ChatGPT. And it's super interesting and helpful and scary as all hell. And they don't advertise to me yet in it. But we all know that's coming. Come on, Sam. We all know it's coming. It's creepy. Good. Have you guys used it at all?
- [20:34]
B
I haven't.
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A
I have not.
- [20:35]
B
I've heard of it, but it's creepy.
- [20:38]
A
Because it knows you so well. It's creepy because of what you're searching in chat gbt. Like, why is it creepy?
- [20:45]
C
It is actually amazing. You get it on the Pro account, right? And it's because it's expensive. Overnight While you're sleeping, ChatGPT is doing all this compute on, all the stuff you've been engaging with it on. And then it's creating this custom report that's highly customized to your individual specific things that you've been thinking about. And it makes some great assumptions, and it's usually right. And you're like, wow, okay, love it.
- [21:16]
B
That's cool. If anyone's ever seen that, like, early adopter curve, Rob is like, the first person standing at the start of the early adopter curve.
- [21:24]
C
It's just, you know, I need something to compensate for that.
- [21:27]
A
OpenAI hasn't even hit the publish button yet, and somehow Rob actually has access to it.
- [21:32]
C
Well, it's a good one. Check it out. Pulse.
- [21:35]
B
So mine is Triathlon live broadcasts on outside tv. I don't think there's a huge audience watching that. And they do have advertising, and it's their frequency. It's so bad. Like, I will see the same spot. I'm not even joking. Maybe 20 times, because these races are long. They can be eight hours for a full Ironman. And, man, I mean, I will see the same commercials over and over and over again. But, yeah, probably a niche. Not a lot of people watching a live stream of.
- [22:04]
C
Not a lot of Dunkin Donut commercials, I imagine.
- [22:07]
B
No, no, it's not. But maybe an opportunity to diversify a little bit. You should get some Market Architects ads in there. That's it for this episode of the Marketing Architects. We'd like to thank Taylor De Los Reyes for producing the show. You can connect with us on LinkedIn. And if you like the podcast, please leave us a review. Now go forth and build great marketing Marketing Architects.