For a long while we've known that buying mainstream media necessitates the acceptance of waste. Of every ten seeds we scatter, eight will fall on barren ground.
Now, as we know, things are changing. People will have access to a lot more television channels; many more people will spend more time at their computer screens; and e-commerce is becoming significant.
For brand advertisers, most of this sounds encouraging. For the first time there are channels and programmes directed exclusively at the owners of malodorous brats. Our disposable nappy commercial may not reach all the people we want to reach - but it will certainly exclude all the people we don't.
All baby. No bathwater.
What accuracy? What science? What efficiency? What frugality? What professionalism? What self-deception?
We have taken it as self-evident that advertising to those who will never buy is a waste of money, and so we have neglected to study them.
We have failed to recognise that because the success of a brand resides in the strength of its reputation, there is a significant value in a brand being known to those who don't buy it as well as to those who do.
Very belatedly, we may well discover that what the baby's immersed in is not bathwater at all.
After all being thought to be world famous is what brands need to strive for. Being thought to be world famous is what makes people value them. Real celebrity involves - indeed, demands - spillage. The Prince of Wales meets the Spice Girls. Bishops know about Pampers.
Private media, closed media, are very poor indeed at the crude creation of simple fame, which is what most brands need.
As network television declines in share, and as people increasingly watch different things at different times, it will become harder and harder to reach mass, indiscriminate audiences, simultaneously through broadcast media. None of the new media, brilliant though they are in their own respects, will be able to help.
This will be good news for the outdoor industry.