Who Is The Show For
The Seinfeld episode of Acquired is incredible, essential listening. So many unexpected business lessons to draw and rabbit holes to disappear down, like this one:
Ben: So while we are on the topic of the weird incentives that fall out of subscription-based streaming versus advertising-based TV networks, this is a bit of a brain buster. Tell me if you agree with it or not.David: Okay.
Ben: NBC's '90s advertising business model incentivized attracting a more educated audience than streaming.
David: Yep, I buy that because advertisers are willing to pay for audience demographics, whereas in the streaming world, everybody pays the same $12.99 or whatever it is a month. Doesn't matter who you are.
Ben: Right. In the streaming world, you're just a vehicle for your $12.99.
David: Mm-hmm.
Ben: There are lots of counterarguments to this that I'm open to, but it is sort of an interesting brain puzzle that streaming doesn't incentivize you to get the most valuable viewers.
David: Well, you're happy to take the highest quality viewers.
Ben: You just want viewers though.
David: You just, you just need viewers.
Ben: Yeah, you don't differentiate.
David: You want everybody. Yeah. And, you know, look, streaming is historically subscription-based, but they're adding ad tiers now. Netflix is adding an ad tier.
Ben: Right, and those advertisers will care who the subscribers are.
Media is not the product. Media is the attention engine.
There are many ways to monetise media, each comes with different incentives, structural alignments and atomic units of value.
Sell ads and the audience is the unit. Segmentation is the whole game, because who is watching is what the advertiser is buying.
Sell subscriptions and every viewer is created equal. Everyone's $12.99 spends the same, so there's no reason to go looking for anyone in particular.
And then you also start selling ads...