This weekend, Business Insider wrote a long, detailed piece covering all the ways cable is losing subscribers and television advertising dollars are poised to move to digital media.
A recent analyst note from Macquarie Capital should also be worrisome for those making money in the TV advertising ecosystem, but for a different reason. While the pay-TV industry is hurting from losing more subscribers than it ever has before, this chart shows Facebook and Google are reaching more people than ever. It measures monthly reach in millions of users:
What the chart shows is that while television still holds the title of most pervasive mass medium by reaching 294 million Americans, Facebook and Google aren't too far behind at 200 and 235 million, respectively.
Combined, they're actually bigger than TV — although of course there is plenty of overlap.
It's especially noteworthy given that U.S. marketers are currently spending about 50% more money on television than they are on all digital media (digital gets 27.9% of ad dollars while TV gets 42.1%, per Macquarie). That's a significant "overspend" on TV:
For more on digital's growth and television's struggles, check out our full report.