#media-fragmentation

#media-fragmentation

Anti-media ideologues like Elon Musk love to deploy disempowering language like " you are the media now " to assist in their long-term project of eroding the media's institutional authority. But thinking about the media that broke through in 2025, it really was the weird and non-traditional stuff that triumphed, from the work of Lane Kiffin obsessive Ben Garrett to white nationalist Nick Fuentes lamenting the " low IQ antisemitism" of podcaster Candace Owens, thus kicking off his " generational run."

I've been in that room a hundred times. The lights are dimmed and the "big idea" is revealed to a round of applause. It's bold, beautiful and expensive. And just before lunch, someone says: "Okay, let's bring in comms to get a press release out and prep for any negative feedback." In that moment, the comms team isn't a creative partner. They're the airbag. The risk-mitigation function brought in to protect an idea they had no hand in shaping.

'If you don't speak, someone will speak on your behalf.' It's a maxim that Tim Delaney holds close and one that I hear regularly from him. It is, naturally, a point well made. All brands should aim to be part of 'the conversation'. But in today's fragmented media landscape, simply speaking up is not enough to guarantee being heard. So, what's your strategy to get heard?

The infinite options available - there are more than 32,200 linear channels and 89 unique streaming sources in the U.S. alone - can often feel more like a challenge and less like an opportunity. But by simplifying media planning and buying, leveraging automation and unifying data and audiences across platforms, local advertisers are deriving more value from their campaigns and driving better business outcomes - vital in an environment in which marketers everywhere are forced to do more with less.

But as media fragmentation has gone into hyperdrive over the past two decades, brands have been forced to diversify the ways in which they gain and hold our attention. It's no longer viable or effective to overly depend on traditional paid media tools. Marketers can create content and experiences that attract and engage audiences rather than interrupt and annoy them-and drive results. Some of the best examples of this is what we call "brand entertainment." Brands of all stripes talk about it, but it is the exceptions that truly invest in making actual entertainment.