In the not-so-distant future of advertising, Hollywood, armed with big data, will be able to create precision-targeted ads that will compete with today’s dominant advertisers, social networks. Today, many advertisers are finding that relying on the most popular platforms might not actually give them the reach they want for their ads. Facebook has admitted more than once that it has mistakenly inflated all kinds of ad metrics, from how much time users spend watching video clips to time spent reading articles.

Wired reports that, “Google, meanwhile, failed to update its measurement model in time for an accreditation deadline.” What if, asks Wired, “advertisers’ decision to pour money into these platforms is based on a wobbly premise? What if they don’t deserve all the ad dollars they’re getting?”

The trend is going towards digital channels, with eMarketer reporting that, “nearly 37 percent of U.S. paid media investments” have gravitated that way in 2016. The figure is predicted to rise to beyond 46 percent by 2020, “all at the expense of TV, print, radio, and outdoor advertising.”

Marketing consulting firm ID Comms chief strategy officer Tom Denford sees a different future, one in which “advertisers broaden their sense of how to advertise on Facebook — a platform that’s not just a social network but potentially the world’s most popular broadcaster,” and “traditionally dumb advertisers, such as billboards, become smart and networked.”

“This all goes to the radical, old-fashioned principle that actually, the environment of your advertising messaging is really important,” he said. “We’ve kind of forgotten about that.”

Hyper-targeting has the inherent problem of “ignoring the wider pool of possible customers,” with brands risking hyper-targeting themselves into invisibility. What’s more important is the best ad mix, “a math problem Big Video could make easy to solve.” “When the makers of TV start to know who their viewers are as well as Google and Facebook know their users,” then TV ads can be targeted “both far and wide.”