Commentary

Your Brand's Audience Isn't Who You Think It Is

• by Caitlyn Banowsky , January 27, 2026

Here’s the reality marketers need to acknowledge: The audience you’ve defined in your targeting models is likely not the audience that will deliver impact. Traditional demographic inputs (age, gender, income, ZIP) don’t reflect how people actually make decisions anymore. What drives results isn’t the segment they fall into, but the motivation that shapes what they do.

Today’s consumer doesn’t respond because she’s “35 and female.” She responds because something in her life is shifting: a need for control in moments of change, a desire to reconnect with what matters, a craving for escape, or a search for belonging.

Values, motivations, and emotional states are far better predictors of present and future behavior than demographics alone. Once you speak to someone’s need state, you transcend the labels. Two people with nothing in common on paper (different ages, incomes, ZIP codes) can share the same emotional reality: feeling stuck, craving belonging, needing escape. And when you tap into that, you don’t just reach people. You connect with them.

Many campaigns fall apart because the media buy defaults to demographics. Or media targets one group, while the creative was built for another. The result is predictable: misalignment. The message doesn’t land. The audience doesn’t respond. And suddenly you’ve wasted media dollars, creative energy, and production spend on work that never had a fair shot.

The audience in the brief should match the audience you buy. Achieving that takes real alignment between brand strategy, creative strategy, and media. Your targeting signals (behavioral, affinity, contextual, psychographic) must map back to the same need states and values expressed in the work. When creative speaks truthfully and media reaches the right people, the payoff isn’t just consistency, but stronger, faster performance.

Here are three ways to align your brief with your audience:

-- Start at the insight stage by going beyond demographic research. Lean into ethnography, social listening, need-state mapping, and psychographic segmentation. Ask: What emotional or functional tension is driving this person?

-- As you move into audience development, define your audience in terms of need states: “people who feel their life is accelerating and want tools to slow down,” not “women 30–44.” And when the media plan comes together, make sure it reflects those same need states. Do your partners offer signals or proxies for these motivations? Can you target content or behaviors that reflect them?

That means having those perspectives in the strategy room, the creative room, and the media planning room. If you’re targeting “first-gen professionals seeking more stability,” you need someone on your team who has lived some version of that reality. It’s the only way to guide work that truly connects.

-- Start by measuring resonance, not just reach. Don’t stop at impressions or vanity metrics. Look at relevance, sentiment, emotional connection, and shared intent. Track how the audience you intended to reach actually behaves, not just who happened to see your ad.

A brand’s audience isn’t defined by demographic labels. It’s defined by what people need, what they feel, and what motivates them. And when you combine those insights with authentic lived experience and a media buy aligned to real motivations, you don’t just reach people -- you make an impact.

 

AI And the Age of the Marketing 'Pinball Machine'

• by Toby Southgate , January 28, 2026

More than one billion people now use standalone AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity every month, according to a recent We Are Social report. Adoption has been rapid, global and irreversible. For marketers, the most important question isn’t how fast AI is spreading; it’s how that adoption is rewiring the way people move between channels we know and rely on.

The traditional funnel has finally collapsed, and in place of the linear consumer journeys we’re familiar with, we now have something that better resembles a pinball machine. We might begin with broad, conversational AI prompts, ricochet into social feeds for validation, bounce to search for comparison, consult creators for reassurance -- and often end up somewhere entirely unexpected.

Each interaction is a bounce. Each channel plays a distinct role. AI has simply added  new ramps, flippers, and alarms, accelerating the movement between touchpoints and increasing the unpredictability of the path to purchase.

So while AI is often the beginning of the journey -- whether we realize that or not, given the integration of AI into search -- it’s almost never the end.

When we use AI tools, queries are usually exploratory rather than transactional. Around 18% of conversations with AI focus on information-gathering, while the top three use cases are “therapy and companionship,” “organizing my life,” and “finding purpose.” These moments are about orientation and sense-making, not commerce.

Brands may surface through AI -- a gift idea, a shortlist, a recommendation --  but discovery is just the beginning. What follows is verification and sense-checking, where consistency and authenticity become critical. If your brand doesn’t show up coherently across touchpoints, trust erodes as quickly as attention.

Which brings us to social. Despite the AI hype cycle, social media’s role in the marketing mix has intensified. There are now 5.66 billion active social media user identities worldwide. Roughly two thirds of the global population uses social platforms every month.

Advertising on social remains the #3 source of brand awareness globally, just behind search and TV. And more than 30% of consumers say they discover new brands through social. Looking at younger audiences only, for 16- to 34-year-olds social remains the single biggest driver of awareness.

Any suggestion that social is being replaced should be put firmly to rest. But it’s not a silver bullet, either. The real shift marketers need to navigate is that the mix matters more than ever, so ideas and creativity become increasingly valuable.

AI doesn’t simplify marketing, it compresses timelines: decision cycles shorten,  channel-hopping accelerates, so brands influence across moments rather than unfolding in sequence. Planning for neat, linear journeys isn’t just outdated, it’s a misunderstanding of fundamental behaviors.

This demands a different mindset: less obsession with attribution, more focus on coherence and narrative. Marketing rewards those who design for movement rather than control, those who expect verification, friction and detours, and who build systems that can withstand them.

In the age of the pinball machine, success doesn’t come from watching the ball spin, or slowing it down. It comes from understanding the angles, and playing accordingly.

 

Commentary

Why Big Station Groups Could Survive - And Thrive

• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, January 28, 2026

TV station groups -- especially dominant large ones -- will continue to thrive in years to come.

But they need to be aggressive in growing -- something the Trump Administration has increasingly hinted it will help with.

This continues to be good news for the largest owner of U.S. TV stations -- Nexstar Media Group.

Nexstar’s proposed $6.2 billion deal to buy TV station group Tegna will almost certainly get go ahead from the Trump Administration -- perhaps as early as next month.

The merger deal was announced in August 2025.

This will come with the lifting of the station ownership cap. The Federal Communication Commission prohibits a company from owning or controlling TV stations that in total reach more than 39% of all U.S. television homes.

“We expect FCC Chairman [Brendan] Carr to proceed with a cap elimination on the agenda in the next 1-3 months, potentially as soon as February, with enough rationalization and backing to counter the inevitable lawsuits that will follow,” writes Daniel Kurnos, media analyst for Benchmark Equity Research, in a recent note.

But it is a bit more than just gaining added U.S. market reach.

He says: “Nexstar will successfully acquire Tegna, creating massive synergies and an in-market juggernaut.”

This will come from benefiting from connected TV (CTV) related businesses, quickly gaining higher automotive advertising share, and big benefits from sporting events on its CW network. Nexstar also owns NewsNation, a cable TV news channel, and its around 200 TV stations.

Overall, there is a benefit that the strongest of the strong -- including possibly Sinclair Inc., second to Nexstar in terms of U.S. stations ownership -- will also make gains down the road with their own merger TV station group deals.

“We think there is ample evidence to suggest that new market definitions are likely to prevail with regards to one of the oldest, most outdated group of rules and regulations in the media industry.”

Competing cable TV network Newsmax is worried that eliminating that the 39% would harm smaller-to-midsize TV news platforms -- those owning national cable TV channels and TV stations.

Key for TV stations groups are their nonstop efforts around local -- and in some cases, still growing -- TV news coverage. This is live content that continues to be deemed highly valuable when it comes to viewer engagement for national and local TV advertisers.

Those gaining sizable market share then would also seem to be more competitive as live, premium video platforms against continuously growing, local digital players.

TV stations continue to see sharply higher political ad revenues every two years, with the midterm elections and Presidential election cycle.

Is all this enough to give thumbs up to legacy TV stations -- as an industry as a whole?

No doubt bigger players will create more competitors to digital-first local media platforms. Watch your big screens for answers.