Long tail media in the store

There are on the order of one quadrillion (1 followed by 15 zeros) media exposures annually in stores around the world. The question of how those exposures are presently allocated and the current dynamics of in-store media are addressed in this article by examining media exposure in a typical supermarket. Thinking of shoppers in a store as an audience in the traditional media sense can introduce some intriguing possibilities. The long tail analogy is apt for shopper marketing in the sense of the small number of products that produce very large unit sales, but there also is a variety of media to attract shoppers' attention in stores, which differ greatly in both exposures and effectiveness. This article points the way to an objective view of this crowded and complex field.