Question about reach and advertising

[solaristics]

I noticed in my recent game the following:

- I had two advertising units in a store advertising the same product linked to different media firms
- They were the only two newspaper firms in the city (one was mine and one was the government)
- I don't remember the exact numbers, but the government was initially at a reach of around 50 and mine started at 0 of course
- Over time I noticed that the two firms eventually combined (after about 4 years) to a total reach of 100%. I watched this fluctuate in real-time in my advertising units but it always added to 100% (to 2 decimal points IIRC!)
- What also happened was that my brand value maxed out at about 90 no matter how much I spent on these two. Over time the brand awareness dropped and the loyalty went up, but the total always added to around 90.
- After a couple of years of this I decided to drop the government newspaper and link to a government TV station. My brand value rapidly rose to 100 in a few months and capped out there (I did notice that brand awareness and brand loyalty added to over 100 though)

So, it seems that "reach" for a media firm is not reach of the total city population but audience share of the fraction of the population that use that particular medium. In this example, 90% of the city population read newspapers. I'm not aware of this percentage being displayed in-game anywhere. This also answers the question that I had been wondering: why bother advertising with more than one number and type of media firm. I also expect over time that this percentage changes as "legacy" media lose overall share to new media advertising firms.

So, is all this correct? This all might have been obvious to everyone else, but I only have 10 or so hours in the game and it was news to me!

[David]

So, is all this correct? This all might have been obvious to everyone else, but I only have 10 or so hours in the game and it was news to me!

That's correct.

There is a setting called "Disruption to Traditional Media" which you can use to customize this.