Think your target is too niche for TV? Think Again.

Television is a mass medium. How many times have you heard this phrase articulated in one form or another? It’s been repeated so often, some advertisers automatically assume that television is best for reaching a large, wide, varied audience, and that other media are better for targeting narrower segments.

Things have changed. Dramatically. Television has become a mass medium with the ability to reach pinpoint segments of the population with unprecedented accuracy and effectiveness. Many niche-oriented commercials have been successful, in large part because of two developments:

First, fragmentation of stations and cable networks. As watchers of cable/satellite know, stations and programming now exist for just about every interest and demographic. If you want to reach older people who play golf, young-single-urban professionals or do-it-yourselfers, you can target your niche audience with precision. General marketers don’t like fragmentation. We love it.

Second, targeting technologies have made quantum leaps forward. Using sophisticated analytics, advertisers can now create a media buy that reaches a much more specific audience profile. While the dawn of Addressable TV has been talked about for 30 years – we are finally seeing it come to fruition.  This method of targeting TV viewers through demographic, geographic or behavioral data is estimated to be available in 60+ million households.  Whether it’s AT&T, Dish Network, Comcast, or other platforms like Audience Express, Addressable TV is proving to be very effective.

Programmatic options, such as Simulmedia, Brightroll and NBCU, are increasingly playing a strategic role in reaching these unique audiences. Connected TV (Roku and Hulu) also comes with more granular audience data, which allows for greater targeting capabilities.

These developments don’t mean that niche advertisers should ignore other traditional, narrow-focused tactics. What it does mean is that television advertising should be considered as part of the marketing mix. Because even those “impossible to find” targets are becoming less and less “impossible to find.”

If you’d like to hear more about getting targeted with TV, click here and let’s talk.