Audiences are becoming increasingly fragmented in the ways they find and experience entertainment content and related marketing messages, which can be frustrating for the brands, businesses marketers and advertisers that are trying to reach them. There is indecision and hesitancy about where to best spend tightening marketing budgets and nowhere is this more true than in the explosive areas of online video and social media. Demographics aside, we must now contend with, and benefit from, media, platforms and devices that didn’t exist less than a decade ago. Strap on your helmet and lace up your boots because it’s only going to get wilder.

The Battle Begins

Since the first radio ad was broadcast in 1922, waging war on print, and the first TV ad was broadcast in 1941, declaring war on radio advertising, the marketing and advertising battles have raged on in the name of consumer attention. The battles have been fought not only over which shows would be broadcast and which ads would run, but over which media they would be delivered. Pre-internet, video recorder Betamax battled VHS. Online, QuickTime battled Windows Media and RealPlayer and then Flash which could be outflanked by HTML5.

Now, in 2011, consumers are bombarded with an unprecedentedly dizzying array of choices in not only entertainment, but also platforms and devices. TV, movies and radio are delivered online. Online video and web content are delivered on TV, and everything on the planet is delivered 24/7 via computers, smart phones, iPad tablets, video sharing sites, Twitter, Facebook, video delivery platforms, ad server networks, bit torrents, DVDs, DVRs, social networking sites, blogs, advertainment as content and furtively branded entertainment.

Consumers are arguably riddled with more advertising and marketing than ever, but they are also no longer restricted in what they watch, where they watch or how they watch. Audiences are no longer tethered to any one delivery system. To brands, businesses, advertisers and marketers, they have become moving targets.

Launching Video Marketing Missiles

So what’s the best way to hit a moving target? Well, you could adjust your sites, lead your target, compensate for wind speed and direction or you could just deploy something that will hit them for you, like a message-laden, heat-seeking, video marketing missile.

Online video marketing involves building creative around a message in an entertaining way, developing the message to be the entertainment and allowing the message to be shared. So by taking advantage of the shareability of online video, marketers can develop creative that is likely to be shared and then encourage viewers to use the many tools at their to disposal to share the content and the message. In this way, you are employing millions of viewers as your delivery platform, regardless of what actual devices they are using. A smart phone can communicate with a computer that can communicate with a Facebook app which can launch a video that leads to a microsite and so on.

Creating and Delivering Technology-Agnostic Content

Instead of trying to predict which devices and platforms your fragmented audiences may be using, predict what content they want. Focus on creating and deploying relevant, engaging and shareable branded entertainment, videos and integrated social media  content that will find your audiences, whenever they’re online, wherever they they are, and whatever they’re doing.

Keep your heads down and never surrender. Over and out.

Originally published on ReelSEO, written by Supercool Creative Director David Murdico