Page 173 - Convergent Journalism an Introduction Writing and Producing Across Media

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Multimedia Advertising

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The beginning of the end of traditional mass media advertising came
in February 1993. The first Internet browser, called Mosaic, was intro-
duced and the World Wide Web was soon upon us all. Society and
advertising would never be the same.
The creation of the Web and other digital technologies allowed con-
sumers to start taking control of information and entertainment. No
longer could the providers of media control what you read or viewed
by what they chose to publish or broadcast. Advertising, which serves
as the primary revenue source for mass media, started to see its impact
on the American media consumer begin to erode.
When Larry Light, the global chief marketing officer at McDonald’s,
said, “mass marketing today is a mass mistake,” advertising people took
notice (Ciociola, 2004). McDonald’s used to spend two-thirds of its
ad budget on TV. Today it’s one-third.
The age of traditional mass media is quickly coming to a tipping
point. The mass audiences of the past 50 years, driven primarily by TV
viewing, are becoming the niche audiences of the 21st century. The
one-size-fits-all approach of mass media doesn’t fit in today’s person-
alized media world. Video games, cable TV, the Internet, cell phones,