Summary
Misconceptions abound regarding TV's penetration, when in fact TV ads are delivered on an extremely fragmented and segmented playing field. Key is to find the medium that delivers the largest share of the audience you seek, then to repeat your message in / on that medium as often as you can afford to achieve the desired reach and frequency of your targeted audience.
Analysis
For Information Week to call TV advertising as king, is as shortsighted as thinking the election of a new president will be the panacea that brings market corrections to the economic woes that befuddled the nation. Quite simply, TV has done (and done well) what every other communication medium also does - it splintered into targeted demographic niches. That said, and that understood - it's clear that TV does not deliver an affordable advertising solution for 90% of those in business today, but rather only a buckshot option for the largest 10% of national companies seeking not to sell their products but to "brand" their products. Think about it ... station for comedy? Yes. Station for African Americans? Yes. Station for golf enthusiasts? Yes. And so on and so forth. Same applies to RADIO, same applies to Print. Yet print, long ago proclaimed a dying medium sees the launch of some 600 new magazines each year in the United States. Print is hardly dead. It's merely continuing to fragment - delivering to and targeting audiences sought "specifically" by advertisers.
Internet - or digital on the other hand ... has yet to wrap their arms around quantification of it's audiences. Too often we hear about hits, then it was page views, then it was unique visitors, now it's "time of engagement." - When digital can determine who is coming to their sites with certainty and deliver that data to advertisers with ABSOLUTE clarity - they'll quickly ascend to "king" status described by Information Week.
Until that time - know this, every medium has been splintered. Every medium claims to deliver critical mass. In most markets, critical mass (believe it or not) is still coming the way of the local metro newspaper. Yep. In each market - most newspapers today still deliver 50% or better critical mass. TV, Radio and the beloved yet unrefined and untamed internet offer no more than 38% share in any given market. Exceptions? Sure - they're out there for those so desperately inclined to disprove the point ... but its far easier to see that no one is delivering half the local audience like the trusted old dog of printed medium.
