Outgrowing Advertising: Multimodal Business Models as a Product Strategy

The apparent limitation of the ad-supported media business model is that there will never be enough traffic to satisfy the beast. But while subscription revenue is stickier and gives creators more runway and short-term security, eventually the flame that started any new project will be extinguished. A new muse will need to be found.

Subscriptions or advertising. The pivot to paid is overall a healthy trend for many publishers, but subscriptions aren’t a savior. Ads still have a role, sometimes as the main plank of media business models. The success of Axios, Morning Brew and Dotdash prove that. And ads can work with subscriptions -- look at the success Bloomberg is having in t... See more

One through-line that cuts through all of the above is business model innovation. U.S. consumer internet has long been reliant on digital advertising. Partly because it matured on mobile—at a time when mobile advertising was less proven and mature—the Chinese consumer internet pioneered more creative and diversified revenue streams. Take Facebook a... See more

Business models -> explore multiple new business models (play-to-earn! staking/yield/etc) as opposed to just ads and subscriptions.

- There are multiple ways to monetize an online audience: subscription plans, conferences, consulting sessions, selling premium content, etc.

Tencent, Bilibili, and Kuaishou all rely heavily on “value-added services”—things like micropayments and subscriptions and virtual currencies. More Western companies will turn to VAS, particularly if Apple and Google reduce the 30% tax they take on every digital economy. Already, Discord and Clubhouse have eschewed ads and Facebook, Snap, and Amazo... See more

“We love the ads and we expect the ads to continue. But I think that long term to have a healthy content business, you have to have multiple revenue streams and you don’t want to be completely dependent on advertising,” said Jacob Weisberg, the former editor-in-chief of Slate Group who started a podcasting company called Pushkin Industries with Mal... See more