Brian Spencer began a recent conversation about marketing with a bold statement: “We live in a world where mass media is dead,” said the marketing director of Kroger Precision Marketing at 84.51.
“You and I don’t watch TV the same way we did eight, nine years ago. … Those audiences have been more and more fragmented,” Spencer explained. In 2025, “everything is personalized – you’re listening to podcasts, your personalized playlists.”
Major brands can, and in many cases should, still advertise via traditional TV and radio, Spencer said. But smaller brands would be well advised to take advantage of the possibilities provided by newer forms of media.
“The algorithm is giving [people their] preferred programming,” Spencer noted. “All of these streaming platforms are addressable media – retail signals can be applied to those places.”
It’s all part of retail media’s rapid evolution. Marketers are now able to help brands solve complex business challenges via precision audiences. Brands are moving away from thinking of retail media strictly as a retargeting mechanism and toward using retail insights to help them grow.
“Right now, it’s about finding those segments you want to reach – that you think are going to create growth for you – and reaching just those households,” Spencer said. “That’s a way to make sure that your TV and audio campaigns are focused on that net, new white space for your brand.”
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As any millennial, Gen Xer, or “boomer” knows, the digital world isn’t always easy to wrap your mind around. That’s why Spencer is an advocate of programmatic buying teams that can help brands reach target audiences efficiently.
Small- and medium-sized brands “need specialists,” Spencer said. “You need a programmatic buying team who understands how to select which of those apps – those networks and platforms – and apply those audiences appropriately across all those different spaces.”
In 2025, marketing can now be handled by in-house teams who provide managed services. Marketing activations are provided by teams of programmatic planners and buyers that help brands pinpoint – and reach – their ideal audience segments, often via streaming services and apps.
Data-driven platforms like connected TV (CTV) allow advertisers to deliver targeted ads. And, these CTV ads allow for precise audience targeting, as well as real-time performance tracking, as noted by emarketer.com. According to Nielsen, streaming TV now represents 46% of all TV usage.
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“Streaming television and streaming audio, those are huge opportunities for brands,” Spencer said. “If you’re a smaller or mid-sized brand, it would’ve taken a huge investment level to have a major TV campaign in years’ past in the linear TV world. Any brand can be successful in the streaming TV space now, by just applying the right purchase signals, the right data signals, and the right audiences.”
The marketing expert said managed audio and connected TV are “where consumer eyes and ears are going today.”
Even small brands can advertise effectively in 2025, simply by reaching their ideal, precision audiences via digital platforms.
Streaming services, apps, and podcasts are how people are increasingly consuming media these days, Spencer said, adding “there’s a big, wide-open space right now for brands to take advantage of all of that.”
Food for Thought Leadership
Is the future of flavor increasingly borderless? Valda Coryat, vice president of marketing for condiments and sauces at McCormick, reveals how curiosity powers McCormick’s flavor foresight, why segmentation by “flavor personality” matters, and how flavors are becoming more culturally driven.
