Technical jargon: What does "granular" mean?

What doesn't everything have to be granular these days: a strategy, a concept, a campaign, an ad, everything. Fortunately, it has replaced the word "atomized," which actually meant the same thing: breaking something down to the smallest possible unit. Data analysts then speak of a datapoint, marketers of a target person, and publishers of a reader.Yet the adjective originally meant grainy or granular. A pile of sand, so to speak. But in the sandbox of advertising and communication, there have been a few unwelcome intruders for some time now.

Behavior beats demographics

What is granular is the natural enemy of all rough planners, because it is often so detailed that it becomes intangible. In the age of digitization and data collection, however, everything granular is more popular than ever. Today, data tells us not only who our customers are (demographics), but above all what, when and where they do or don't do something (behavior). It used to be much simpler: For decades, money was shifted back and forth between advertising agencies, media agencies and publishers. This was based on the figures published twice a year by the WEMF (an institute founded in 1964 by the advertising and publishing industry's interest groups), which was always enough to serve as the official currency for media planning and publisher marketing, because it was used to calculate the advertising rates that companies had to pay if they wanted to place ads somewhere. The "current" readership study has just been published again. In it, you learn a lot about demographics, but little about reader behavior - and all this with a six-month delay.In the age of Google and other analytics, social media metrics and auctions of advertising space on digital platforms in real time, this is already very slow. And in a digital world where every customer's behavior is tracked, analyzed, and evaluated down to the last detail for campaign optimization or granulation, the cries of advertising and media agencies sound a lot like offended children in the sandbox with a sieve that's too coarse.*Benno Maggi is co-founder and CEO of Partner & Partner. He created the section "Vom Fach" in the NZZ FOLIO and was in charge of it for years. He presents and decodes words and terms that can be used either for small talk, being important, getting excited, playing Scrabble or simply for fun.