The media is the moron.

There's an article in "Ad Age" this morning on the sort of topic that gets a hipster's "that will change everything" juices gushing. The headline proclaims: "Study: Young Consumers Switch Media 27 Times An Hour."

The opening sentence starts just as you would expect it would: "It's every advertiser's worst nightmare: consumers so distracted by a dizzying array of media choices that they no longer notice the commercials supporting them. And it's time might be closer than you think...."

OMG! OMG! :-(

Advertising as we know it is dead.

Of course, what is dead here are the brains of the reporter doing the reporting and the editor accepting the bs.

Advertising's death knell was based on a study of--get this--30 participants studied by a Boston company called "Innerscope." They sound like they search for polyps in your anus. In any event, Innerscope, according to their website "measures and quantifies an audience's initial unconscious emotions and displays them in easy to interpret "Engagement Maps"--moment by moment analysis of the audiences' emotional response to the media stimuli.

"Using state-of-the-art technology and proprietary methodologies, the audience's emotional reaction (engagement) to any media format or length are measured objectively.

"Innerscope's precise, objective measurement of emotional engagement provides an unbiased look at the consumers' true emotional responses, so that more creative and cost-effective marketing decisions can be made."

Oh. OK.


Now, here are some fragments from Ad Age's superb reporting: "Though it had only 30 participants..." "Though hardly definitive..." And the final caveat, "The people in Innerscope's study were most likely more upscale and familiar with technology than the average person. As sych the findings present only a suggestion of how consumer behaviors might evolve."

In other words a study not worth the binary paper it was printed on being reported on by a magazine with no journalistic integrity.

This one will be quoted widely.