Advertising has entered a new era – but not just an era of artificial intelligence, data-backed strategy, or user-generated content – it’s also an era of fragmented creative channels. Instead of the traditional media landscape, where TV is the primary media channel, today’s marketing is spread across digital video, paid social, and many others.
It’s Time to Embrace Fragmented Media
Grace Kite, Founder of the UK research firm Magic Numbers, now Vice President of Analytic Partners, explained it this way: “TV was always top of the pile, but it’s not anymore.” A 2025 study by Analytic Partners found that channels such as digital display and paid social are becoming more effective than television.
Kite claimed that if marketers lean into media fragmentation, they’ll get more exposure and more sales. A 2025 study by Havas and Lumen offered evidence that “seeing lots of ads is a perfectly good substitute for lack of attention to any one ad.” In the study, multiple exposures to 2-second ads resulted in greater brand awareness than fewer exposures to 5-second ads. That means that marketers can leverage “small” media for big brand growth.
Grace Kite, Vice President, Analytic Partners
This approach also increases sales. A study from Meta found that brands get 21% more sales from “aggregate” advertising exposures than from “continuous” advertising exposures. And another study from Analytic Partners showed that when advertising spend was spread over 5 channels, it drove 70% more sales than when concentrated on just one channel.
Kite’s research proves that brands can leverage fragmentation by spreading their spend across channels and targeting multiple small advertising exposures. Kite calls this the “lots of littles” approach.
Creativity in a Fragmented Media Landscape
The “lots of littles” approach doesn’t just apply to the media team, but also the creative team. The Vice President of Brand Strategy at Jellyfish, Tom Roach, explained how algorithms are changing the way we approach advertising. The traditional advertising principles – singularity, consistency, and repetition – are becoming increasingly at odds with what the social media platforms are looking for: multiplicity, novelty, and freshness.
Tom Roach, Vice President, Brand Strategy, Jellyfish
Roach emphasized that creative is much more effective when it’s optimized for each channel. A study by Analytic Partner found that when creative appears in the right context, it increases ROI by 20%–150%. And even though the rewards are high, according to CreativeX, 50% of media budgets are put behind ads that are not fit for their respective platforms.
Big is a Collection of Smalls
Roach also explained that marketers need to embrace “imaginative repetition.” The idea that modern advertising should be creatively reproduced over hundreds of executions.
For Jennifer Healan, Marketing Vice President at McDonald’s, that meant leveraging unexpected creative channels. When the McDonald’s team learned that anime TV shows had created spoof versions of the QSR chain, they decided to embrace the trend. The anime-inspired campaign, WcDonald’s, leveraged this real consumer subculture and created hundreds of channel-specific executions like custom-designed packaging, episodic social content, and even crew member T-shirts.
Jennifer Healan, Vice President, US Marketing, Brand, Content and Culture, McDonald’s USA
To conclude, Healan encapsulated the approach in just one sentence: “Big is a collection of smalls.”
Key Takeaways:
- Embracing fragmented media leads to better brand growth.
- Spreading advertising spend over several channels boosts sales.
- Marketers must leverage media channels that are attuned to their audience.
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