Publishers control a lot of mindshare and direct culture, but they don’t take in a proportional amount of revenue.
Of course it goes without saying that they are being disrupted on all fronts, most notably from social media like Facebook, Twitter, Tik Tok, etc. But those platforms are also sending traffic to some degree, so they’re not total enemies. Teenagers were never reading newspapers en masse.
But there is a class of intelligence capitalist publishers – DotDash, J2 Global, IAC, and Future PLC that understand both sides.
Some have already started, but I think the future will be in media/publishers understanding their audience and psychographics so well that they start being a front end acquisition channel but also provide other solutions that solve problems and get them paid.
Buzzfeed and Tasty sold their cooktop – which I think is kinda dumb. I’m sure it did ok but that’s not gonna earn them a billion.
A better example is Mindbodygreen – they acquired visitors to blog posts and sold some of them on $700+ videos.
Or Atlas Obscura providing group tours. But here’s the thing – why are they not aggregators of experiences? Why did AirBnb do it?
In essence there’s a huge divide between the media world and software companies.
Bloomberg is a rare example of someone who’s done it – and they’re doing pretty well.
A16Z is a venture capital firm that thinks it worthwhile to publish even more.
The future will see a melding of both worlds like that.