Disrupt or die – now from inside the advertising industry
Article 11 of 14 in series: The Great Reach Reset
When Tune Hein and I wrote the book Disrupt or Die in 2016, we were observing industries being reshaped from the outside. Hotels were reorganised by booking platforms. Taxi markets were challenged by Uber. Nokia and BlackBerry had been overtaken by Apple’s ecosystem logic. Back then, disruption felt dramatic and visible. You could clearly see who had adapted and who had not.
Our core conclusion in the book was quite simple. Technology does not win on its own. Companies win when they understand customers better than incumbents do and are willing to redesign their business models around that understanding. Technology is an enabler. Customer relevance is the real force.
Today, I am in an industry undergoing its own structural transformation. Media and advertising are not collapsing, but they are being fundamentally reshaped. This time, I am not observing from a distance. I am part of it. And from the inside, the dynamics are more complex than the headlines suggest.
Fragmentation has changed the rules
Media consumption has changed permanently. Audiences no longer gather in a few predictable places. They move between linear TV, streaming services, CTV environments, social platforms, retail media networks, podcasts, gaming and creator ecosystems. They watch live sports on one screen while engaging on another. They binge, scroll, listen and switch constantly. AI is entering creative production and optimisation. Data environments are becoming more fragmented and more regulated at the same time.
From the outside, this looks like technology-driven disruption. From the inside, it reveals a structural shift in how reach must be created.
Because in the middle of all this change, brands still need what they have always needed: the ability to consistently reach as many people as possible to remain mentally available for consumers to buy stuff. That has not changed. If anything, fragmentation has made it more important and more difficult.
The real battlefield is incremental reach
In a fragmented media landscape, the real competitive battlefield is incremental reach. Not who can generate the most impressions. Not who can report the strongest platform-specific metrics. But who can efficiently extend exposure to new audiences, reducing duplication and increasing total coverage?
The question is no longer simply how much reach you buy, but how much additional reach each investment delivers. Who can ensure that every additional budget allocated expands total audience coverage rather than simply hitting the same individuals repeatedly?
Fragmentation makes that challenge unavoidable. No single channel can deliver sufficient scale on its own. Linear TV still provides mass coverage. CTV adds flexibility and data integration. Social platforms capture reach and attention in different contexts. Audio reaches people when screens are absent. Retail media connects exposure with commerce. Each environment contributes something different.
But real growth happens when these environments work together to maximise incremental reach rather than compete for overlapping impressions.
Cross-media measurement is the enabler
This is where cross-media measurement comes into play. Not as the battlefield itself, but as the infrastructure that allows us to compete intelligently on it.
If incremental reach is the objective, cross-media measurement is the discipline that makes it visible and manageable. Without a deduplicated understanding of who we are actually reaching across platforms, we are not managing growth. We are managing fragments, risking optimising in silos while losing sight of total audience expansion.
At the same time, we should be honest about the friction in the current system.
Data still sits in silos. Platforms naturally defend their own narratives. Methodologies differ. Definitions are not always aligned. Integration is complex and often slower than market development. Consumer behaviour evolves rapidly, while measurement frameworks adapt more gradually.
Some of the structures were built for a simpler media landscape. That is not a flaw – it reflects the reality at the time. But as consumption patterns evolve, our frameworks must evolve with them. If we believe in continuous improvement, we must be willing to refine our own models so they remain fit for purpose in a fragmented world.
Innovation must strengthen trust
At the same time, disruption does not mean dismantling what works.
Over the past years, I have developed an even deeper respect for the foundations that make media markets function. Shared standards, transparent methodologies and independent validation are not bureaucratic remnants of the past. They are what allow buyers and sellers to transact with confidence in an increasingly complex environment.
These structures do not move at startup speed, and they should not. Their role is to create stability and comparability in a system that is otherwise constantly shifting.
The task, therefore, is not to abandon standards in the name of innovation. It is to evolve them so they remain robust and relevant. Innovation without transparency creates scepticism. Disruption without trust creates instability. And instability ultimately reduces long-term value creation.
A call to modernise before we are forced to
So my call to action is clear.
We need continued innovation in how we measure and manage incremental reach and effectiveness across platforms. We need models that reflect how people actually consume ads today, not how they did ten years ago. We need stronger collaboration across the ecosystem to unlock true cross-platform audience expansion. And we need the courage to question assumptions when they limit our ability to deliver holistic reach.
At the same time, we must strengthen the foundations of trust and transparency that make the market investable.
When we wrote Disrupt or Die, the message was about urgency. Do not wait for someone else to redesign your industry for you. That message applies here as well.
The battle for incremental reach and effectiveness is already underway. The question is whether we choose to modernise our systems and frameworks proactively, or allow fragmentation and opacity to define the future of advertising.
Disruption today is not about burning down what exists. It is about improving it so that the market can compete more effectively on the battlefield that truly matters: incremental reach and brand impact.
This article is 11 of 14 in our series: The Great Reach Reset
About this article series
In a fragmented media landscape, reach is no longer a simple KPI - it is a strategic growth lever. In this article series, AudienceProject explores why advertisers are not failing at reach, but at measuring it properly, and why incremental, deduplicated cross-media reach has become essential to driving penetration, controlling frequency, and unlocking sustainable growth.
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