Here’s a long (pretty boring) article by my favorite Internet guru, in which he uses math to explain the time-value of information. He finally gets to the point near the end (an ironic twist considering the subject of this piece) with this paragraph:
But the very best content strategy is one that mirrors the users’ mixed diet. There’s no reason to limit yourself to only one content type. It’s possible to have short overviews for the majority of users and to supplement them with in-depth coverage and white papers for those few users who need to know more.
Of course, the two user types are often the same person — the one who’s usually in a hurry, but is sometimes in thorough-research mode. In fact, our studies of B2B users show that business users often aren’t very familiar with the complex products or services they’re buying and need simple overviews to orient themselves before they begin more in-depth research.
In case you’d like to see the math for yourself: https://www.useit.com/alertbox/content-strategy.html