‘Game Space’: Media’s Land Grab For Attention

Unlike ‘old world’ media, an audience is no longer malleable to the medium - quiet the reverse.

Now, the medium or mediums, sway to the intricacies of a modern lifestyle, serving individuals when their attention allows.

A near perfect digital strategy, then, is built upon some very non-digital disciplines, like anthropology and ethnography, for example.

Using any number of digital platforms - mobile, online - at any particular point in time, the message strobes the market until the target group eventually receives the ‘coded’ message, or when they make a conscious decision to seek out relevant information. A good analogy is the radio spectrum. Particular messages are broadcast on particular frequencies, yet using a filter like a radio, the individual tunes in to the preferred message.

As the the digital media spectrum becomes ever more prevalent, channel selection becomes more paramount.

This positioning is perfectly relevant to old school media as well, with the caveat that their window of opportunity to score a direct hit on the intended audience is becoming ever narrower, particularly for an increasingly time-poor audience.

In its place is a widening canvass for digital platforms, particularly mobile. It is no coincidence that the ‘game space’ for engaging an increasing number of people, regardless of time and space, is the sweet spot for smart phone technology, particularly with the weakining of the Internet’s game space post ‘early fringe’ (3pm onwards).

In the context of ethnographic studies, each media must be mapped as to the influence at each time of the day. This so-called ‘game space’ is applicable to each media, either in isolation or more commonly, concurrently with several other media options.

It is critical for channel strategies to identify these media influences are identified and utilised from the perspective of creative development, as well as the usual reach and frequency analysis.

One final point. Each DNA segment will have their own ‘game space’, suggesting that the influence of the Internet, for example, will differ across a 24-hour time period for segment DNA 1 to its influence on segment DNA 3. What a creative time we live in!