Primer on advertising

HMF chapter 11 on advertising was really insightful, especially in two areas; the details about demographics and the fact that 9 out of ten editors had been lobbied by an advertiser to alter content (p. 257) and that one-third had assented. First, coming from TV news, I was very aware of demographics – for example, TV advertisers often pay 2 ½ times more for viewers under age 35 than for older viewers. A top-ranked show like CSI will get top advertising dollars, but a show like the OC might get one-fifth the viewers but charge almost as much as CSI because of the proportion of young adults watching. What I did not know was that online advertising gets so content specific in determining price (p. 255) – people interested in health are more valuable than those interested in video games, for example. That’s fascinating. I also liked the explanation of why there’s so much homogeneity to TV programming (so many crime and medical shows – illustrated in table 11.4 on p. 258). But with 300 satellite and cable channels and the limitless frontier of the Internet does this still happen? I guess it does on the “channels of scale,” the broadcast networks. But isn’t there a growing and more reachable market for diverse content? And does it promise a mix of marginal revenues (MRe – “news and entertainment” value and MRa – ad revenue)?