Laura Ingraham, the long-time conservative radio talk-show and TV personality, has recently decided to take a vacation in the wake of advertiser flight from her show. The advertisers dropped out – for how long we’ll see – in response to a Tweet (is there any other reason these days?) she posted about of the Parkland student and activist David Hogg. Being the social media master that he and other members of his generation is, Mr. Hogg initiated a boycott.

Social media commentary quickly turned to social media rage which thus begat backlash that resulted in advertisers like Nestle and Office Depot stating they would no longer run in Ingraham’s show. She apologized. This all happened in a 24-hour period.

For two installments of her show, the ad time was down some 40%.

Alas, the act of the advertisers declaring they would sit out her show says more about how many other ways there are to reach audiences in a fragmented media environment than it does about corporate morals.

When it comes to things like boycotts, businesses all consider some form of the same thing: risk assessment.

They figured the risk of taking a pass was low because they can reach just as many, or more, potential consumers in other ways then the few they give up by not being in her show.

By that I mean how there are many more media vehicles carrying content to consumers, and so advertisers can use other means of reaching their intended audience. If Laura Ingraham was one of only, say, 5 shows people watched, like in the days of “All in the Family,” boycotting her show could mean certain doom for a product or service needing to reach audiences. But now the calculus has changed. In a personality driven media culture, the damage is done to the personality not the product. Certainly, some amount of halo will shine, or shadow, the product or service associated with the personality. But with 1000s of content nodes, Ingraham is not really all that important in the grand scheme of scalable audience reach for the purposes of delivering an ad message and moving the needle on business objectives.

Yes, by not acting a brand run the risk of having its name associated with a potentially unsavory media contest. But one thing we’ve learned about bad press and social media: the more you ignore it, the faster it goes away.

The takeaway? Don’t expect the companies you do business with or see ads for to suddenly get some kind of religion and doing what might be perceived as the “right thing” for its own sake. Look for them to take advantage of the myriad means of reaching audiences beyond the one attracting the negative attention.