Why The Answer Is So Often Ads

The affluent, early-adopter users who are mostly likely to pay $ᵤ are also those users with highest $ₐ, as advertising to them commands a premium. Unless you enforced discriminatory subscription pricing to users, based on the counterfactual of their potential ad revenue, you’d still be better off advertising to the people willing to drop $10/month ... See more

Subscriptions are unbelievable. You have recurring revenue that, ideally, compounds month after month. Nothing else matters because you have growing subscriptions. And then it stops. Suddenly, you report a loss in subscribers. And panic ensues. Suddenly, you ask: should I have been so anti-ad all these years?

That meant there were three strategies available to media companies looking to survive on the Internet. First, cater to Google. This meant a heavy emphasis on both speed and SEO, and an investment in anticipating and creating content to answer consumer questions. Or you could cater to Facebook, which meant a heavy emphasis on click-bait and human i... See more