As usual a great essay by @benthompson on the big picture of strategy and challenges media business face on the internet.
It’s near impossible to be in the “More reach” quadrants nowadays. Ad rates are not sustainable for most publishers.
Publishers are forced look for new ways to monetize. And sooner or later they will realize that their current wider audience doesn’t convert into anything useful.
To reach these numbers they do anything possible to attract no matter who from Facebook, Google, etc. These people come and go. This is traffic, not an audience.
Nothing changes for you as a publisher between 5 or 8 million visitors per month. The money doesn’t grow proportionally. Which is a sign that something is wrong, no?
And in some sense current low ad rates reflect the value of that type of audience.
The only option left is to provide quality. Change KPIs - stop measuring only reach. Yes, the numbers will fall. But the value rise.
Highly concentrated niche audiences will always be valuable and desired to reach.