Less generously, it s a deluded perspective that explains why business has had so much trouble understanding how to work with the Internet. The answer is that the it in this case is a different kind of it another animal altogether. While the Internet will eventually connect billions of people, it will never be a mass medium in the way television is a mass medium. And the difference is crucial. The more product such advertising could move, the more profit the company made, so obviously, the bigger the audience the better.
Mass media are mass because they re huge.
The content is merely bait to entice the audience. The real show, the real message, is the advertising. Therefore advertisers want to lower the common denominator so that they can get everyone possible into the audience. The best medium is the most massive medium. The best place to place advertising is where the most eyeballs will be forced to eyeball it.