By Dave Taylor, Chief Product Officer, Alliant
The way consumers engage with news has dramatically changed over the past few years. This became very evident during the 2024 presidential election cycle. Legacy media, once the cornerstone of hard news consumption, is quickly losing ground to emerging sources that capture more audience attention. Some podcasts, for example, now boast individual episodes that draw audiences 20 times larger than the primetime viewership of leading cable news networks.
This transformative shift underscores a critical truth for brands: To stay in front of their consumers, they must adapt to these new paradigms of media consumption. Traditional media buying strategies no longer suffice. Today’s landscape requires novel approaches that depend on data to better understand where audiences consume information and how to effectively reach them in these channels.
Emerging News Platforms and Sources
Today’s marketers understand consumer attention is no longer concentrated in a few channels. The fragmentation and growth of new platforms—ones where information, not just entertainment, are being readily consumed—requires brands to embrace a deeper level of agility in reaching audiences. Consider, for example, the recent growth we’ve seen in the following.
- Podcasts: In the U.S., it’s estimated that 100 million Americans now listen to at least one podcast every week, accounting for 34 percent of Americans over the age of 12. Podcasts now serve as both entertainment and a key source of news for millions, often offering a more personalized and relatable experience than traditional media.
- E-newsletters and Substack: Platforms like Substack have disrupted traditional publishing models. Substack alone encompasses more than 35 million active subscriptions, with some of its newsletters generating millions in annual revenue. Newsletters provide curated, direct-to-inbox content that resonates with consumers who seek authenticity and a personal connection with content creators.
- Short-Form Social Media: While not a new format, short-form content, especially video, continues to redefine news and information consumption. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels have emerged as primary sources of discovery, particularly among younger demographics. A growing percentage of TikTok’s user base (more than 2 billion globally) use the app to follow current events and cultural trends, while roughly half of TikTok users under 30 use the platform to keep up with politics.
The Power of Personality
Platforms and channels are undoubtedly important, but the true drivers of this new wave of media consumption is personality-driven. Consumers are increasingly drawn to content creators who blend news with culture, offering perspectives through a lens of entertainment or relatability.
Social platforms may rise and fall, but audiences’ loyalty to their favorite creators, influencers, or podcasters can transcend these shifts. Despite uncertainty over TikTok’s potential U.S. shutdown or Facebook’s declining user base, creators can maintain their influence by migrating to new platforms. Consumers follow these personalities, not the platforms themselves, which highlights the power of individual creators over institutional media brands.
To thrive amid these changes, advertisers must lean into understanding and capitalizing on these audience shifts across channels through data.
A Data-Driven Approach to the New Information Landscape
An agile data-driven strategy that puts the consumer via audiences at the center of cross-channel planning efforts is the right approach. To do so, marketers must prioritize:
- Enrichment of first-party data: Brands need to invest in first-party data enrichment to gain a multifaceted understanding of their audiences. First-party data provides a strong foundation for audience insights, but only with strategic layering of third-party data can brands fully understand where consumers engage with content and determine where they are most receptive to brand messaging. For instance, understanding a consumer’s podcast listening habits alongside their social media activity can enable better segmenting and a more targeted and effective campaign.
- Focus on identity: Data-driven Identity is the cornerstone of effective audience engagement in a fragmented media landscape. When platforms and channels shift, a robust identity-based data strategy allows brands to pivot seamlessly. Data is at the heart of identity mapping that gives advertisers access to target audiences across a rapidly changing framework of platforms, formats and forums.
- Agility in execution: The key to navigating today’s consumer information landscape is agility. Audience behavior will continue to evolve, and data strategies must evolve with it. By leveraging data-driven insights, brands can adapt their campaigns to meet audiences where they are, regardless of how the media landscape shifts.
- Measuring the results: Cross-channel advertising campaigns activated in new forms of media demand measurable results. Data is the connective tissue for accurate and tangible measurement of metrics from reach to first and last-touch attribution to conversion and everything in between.
It’s clear that the consumer information paradigm will continue to shift. The question is: Is your audience data strategy ready to keep up?
