Wired has a nice perspective on the changing face of media and how it is evolving.
For marketers, the article provides great insights into how they need to reshape their marketing thinking. I think they need to get ready for 'snack marketing' - small byte sized campaigns, convenient and fast food like distribution strategies, messages need to be munchy as it will be consumed throughout the day, communication needs to be packaged well with lots of variety and choices, needs to appeal to different target audiences as they will come with different tastes, brand needs to engage consumers at armslength from where it is consumed etc..
Take a look at why it needs to change because media is increasingly getting packaged like a snack:
Movies, TV, songs, games. Pop culture now comes packaged like cookies or chips, in bite-size bits for high-speed munching. It's instant entertainment - and boy, is it tasty.
Replace Nabisco with Apple, the Mini Oreo with the iPod nano, and youve got a blueprint for the current boom in what might be called snack-o-tainment. Apples single-minded marketing campaign for the iPod (its tunes - not albums - in your pocket, after all) taught us the joy of picking the choicest cuts and shuffling them into individual hit pdes. The same with television: When the video iPod launched in October 2005, we were suddenly eager to pay $1.99 to watch a music video or a recent episode of Lost in a smaller, portable version of what was already available for free on that big square thing in our living room.
Today, media snacking is a way of life. In the morning, we check news and tap out emails on our laptops. At work, we graze all day on videos and blogs. Back home, the giant HDTV is for 10-course feasting - say, an entire season of 24. In between are the morsels that fill those whenever minutes, as your mobile phone carrier calls them: a 30-second game on your Nintendo DS, a 60-second webisode on your cell, a three-minute podcast on your MP3 player.
Welcome to the new world of snack marketing!