It’s no secret that media and the way the public obtains news nowadays has made a huge shift from print to digital. Reading a print publication has almost become a faux pas if you really think about it. Glance around the room and see someone holding a newspaper? If so it immediately labels the reader as either old or old at heart.

Not only news but the answers to EVERYTHING are now at our fingertips. In business, if your site is not entirely optimized and user friendly on a mobile device or tablet…you are doing it wrong.

As a marketer or advertiser, reaching your target audience on multiple platforms is a must. Once we’re able to hit consumers on all of these various platforms, the focus shifts from the general message that you want to get out. It allows you to get granular. Develop those target demographics, build those personas and ultimately turn exposure to conversions. Print advertising is singular.

You reach them one way and you’re be lucky if their skimming eyes just so happen to halt at what you’ve come up with. So it is to no surprise that in Pew Research Center’s digital news fact sheet, “digital advertising grew to about $72 billion, an increase from nearly $60 billion in 2015. It is estimated to comprise 37% of all advertising revenue, up from 33% in 2015,” according to an eMarketer in 2016.

Online platforms are becoming more and more advanced with capabilities to not only display ads but also retarget to people who may have shown interest in a particular ad. Facebook alone allows you the ability to target a specific audience with a series of different tools including age, interests and location. In my experience in media marketing, it has been extremely beneficial to be able to use retargeting platforms to “follow” users and remind them that they once or may still have interest in a product or service offering. “Digital display advertising revenue continued to be dominated by just a few companies in 2016, with Facebook comprising 35% of this advertising segment,” according to eMarketer.

We are now in a time where we can’t go on our phones without being hit with advertisements or news being shared on our timelines. Snapchat? Swipe right and get the latest news from a slew of major media outlets with hyperlinks and click-bate laced throughout.

It’s a pretty easy way to feed thousands of people into their marketing funnels so that they are able to display their content to you more frequently. Facebook? I can’t scroll for 5 minutes without being hit with the sharing of the biggest headline stories, most viral videos and side bar and promoted post advertisements for clothes sites that I’ve Google searched once.

But, that’s just it. We have mastered a way to get our message out there while minimizing costs…search engine optimization, generating contact lists via emails for newsletters and email outreach, retargeting by placing cookies on their browsers. The digital age has opened the doors to so many tools for marketing and advertising and we only continue to expand our reach.