Advertiser competition freed brands from subsidizing content creators

Evidence

Over the 2000s, none of the pure, content-driven attention merchants were lucrative. This was, in part, because advertisers realized with so many attention merchants in competition, they didn’t necessarily need to “underwrite” the media industry in the manner that they had for newspapers, radio, or television. … Fundamentally they “don’t want to pay for creation of content.” — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 957

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A structural insight: advertiser surplus collapsed exactly when the media depended on it, because competitive abundance of attention sellers let advertisers stop underwriting journalism. This causal shift explains the whole 21st-century media crisis.
• XREF: connects to: Personal branding looked absurd until social media removed the need for ad budgets — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror…, 157; Advertising revenue exceeding costs created the viable mass media business model — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 40

Broader Connections

• Personal branding looked absurd until social media removed the need for ad budgets #corroborates (0.80) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 157
• Advertising revenue exceeding costs created the viable mass media business model #corroborates (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 40