When I compare my experience on teachable and substack to say youtube, twitter and facebook, it strikes me that "creator-centric" is simply a better experience all around. Absolutely the only reason NOT to do that is to trade off quality for high-volume/low-yield advertising.
Conversation
The unit economics of "content" are finally becoming clear 20 years in.
500 views, monetized via subscription at 10% at say $2 per view, with a 10% commission to the platform is $1
500 views, monetized via ads at say $2 cpm is also $1.
But one of these is a MUCH smarter $
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Why wouldn't ALL attention move from ads to subscriptions? Only reason I can think of is: available attention (audience hunger) and demand for it (advertiser hunger) far exceeds the amount of quality content available to catalyze it
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I don't think I've seen this point made before, that there is actually a quantifiable demand for quality content for which the size of the advertising market is actually a near-perfect proxy.
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I think the problem is actually going to be a vector misalignment problem. Even if you magically increased the amount of content, it wouldn't be aligned with what advertisers want to sell. But it would still quench the demand, so it would kill advertising from the demand side
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Isn’t part of it who ends up paying? Subscriptions require consumer to pay (which is likely better as it aligns the incentives). Most people don’t consider data-mining/other ad-based services as “costly” to them.
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My point is, people would devote 100% of their available attention to content they pay (or is freemium supported by other subscribers) for IF they could find content that meets their needs. They turn to lower-quality ad-supported stuff because they can't.
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Seems related to why micropayments haven't caught on. Both technical reasons & various psychological barriers / not-entirely-rational consumption patterns. (E.g. say I want to watch dumb YouTube vids…my id is happy to pay in attention; my superego would be loathe to cough up $)


