The Streaming Wars are a case study in the impact of interest rates.

Pre-COVInflation, money was free so it was all about subscriber growth (the VC/SV playbook).

Free money train ends & it’s about becoming financially sustainable.

When the dust settles, the profitable will remain.

2 theories on why the Great Rebundling is coming:

1. Netflix was the default, everything else (except Disney) felt like an experimental subscription for users

2. TV ads are purchased by legacy advertisers and agencies. Streaming doesn’t match their status quo. Digital ads are purchased by the new school. Non-self-serve platforms doesn’t match their status quo.

Ad-supported streaming offshoots got caught in the ad revenue valley between digital and legacy advertising powerhouses while linear TV became less enticing for ad buys. Double whammy.

FT: ‘Shakeout has begun’ after $5bn streaming loss for Netflix rivals

The Great Rebundling is coming.

Disney, Warner Bros Discovery, Comcast & Paramount

face a reckoning in 2024 after losing more than $5bn in the past year from the streaming services they built

&

pressure to shrink or sell legacy businesses, scale back production and slash costs following billions in losses

&

a weak advertising market, declining television revenues and higher production costs

Netflix turned a profit and keeps chugging. Sometimes patience is the best strategy. (1st mover advantage never hurts)

Jon Loomer: Are Blogs Making a Comeback?

Social devalues links in favor of videos. Search engines are devolving into AI-powered answer engines. Email open rates are falling.

Channels are composting. While blogs may not be the traffic machines they used to be, they are still a home base you own and can distribute/syndicate your content from.

“The story of Ender’s Game is not this book, though it has that title emblazoned on it. The story is the one that you and I will construct together in your memory. If the story means anything to you at all, then when you remember it afterward, think of it, not as something I created, but rather as something that we made together.” | Orson Scott Card

Stories are made together indeed.

-Rohan Rajiv

Andrew Rosener on LLMs & AI:

these things aren’t creating new ideas, they are really good at finding solutions from existing ideas.

And putting those things together in creative ways. And lots of different useful stuff.

But if we were to just get lazy as the human species and say “oh, AI is here, we’re done,” we just stagnate. Because these things aren’t creating that next frontier, they’re only remixing a static lexicon of art.

That heady brew of supply shock meets demand spike (free money!) caused the end of the free money train. But the buzz might finally be wearing off, prices came down for the first time since lockdown.

But will the shipping attacks at the Suez cause another supply shock?

Hamburger menu in the top right of the screen is one of the worst mobile UX implementations around.

If you sell a product for kids/families, you should be running podcast ads.

Because survey says:

seven in 10 parents whose children consume podcasts regularly say their child is most likely to seek them out, instead of the parents suggesting them.

&

around 48% of U.S. children consume podcasts weekly, with around two-thirds (67%) listening at least monthly.

&

Podcasts are family affairs…underscoring the importance many parents place on family co-listening and -watching.

&

Kids’ interest is growing

Stories are in our DNA. And podcasts are screen-free entertainment. Win-win.

Evidence that podcast ads continue to work.

The Crucial Timing of Ads

Through the lens of podcast ads:

Budgets shrink in January as brands pull back from the holiday sprint and plan for the year ahead.

Things ramp up as the middle of the year approaches.

However, there is also a small dip in midsummer as these same brands are preparing for the holidays at the end of the year.

& then the sprint:

Brands have spent the year planning for the last few months and are committed to their campaigns. This part of the cycle starts to pick up in September and goes through the end of December.

Inverse budget pacing could reap rewards.

Warner Bros. Discovery in talks to merge with Paramount Global

Is The Great Rebundling about to begin?

Humans Prefer AI-Generated Content, New Research Suggests:

AI content - either written entirely by AI or with a final edit by AI - was preferred by readers.

I wonder how much of this is that LLMs are a reflection of how we speak online, so it probably feels more like a mirror than a lot of human-generated marketing copy.

At every step, fish are often being processed to some degree. The more processing you get and the more steps there are in that supply chain, the more likely it is that you’re going to have some sort of mislabeling or fraud because it becomes more and more difficult to identify what it is because it’s become progressively more and more modified as it moves along the supply chain.

This is about more than fish processing.

via the Search Engine podcast

Mr. Beast launched a YouTube analytics tool.

The tool itself may not be groundbreaking (yet?), but that’s not where the real value is.

He knows the algorithm & platform better than anyone not employed there, so what metrics ViewStats shows could be a peek behind the red velvet curtain.

UBS economist Alan Detmeister told the WSJ that the shelter component of CPI inflation can be expected to fall as much as 3.75% by the end of 2024.

Heard much the same from some real estate peeps recently. And also heard them mirror this expectation:

the Fed indicated last week that it’s on track to cut rates next year

Making the housing market a little more dynamic could be a good thing.

via The Daily Upside

Compared to Podcast Pioneers (4+ listening years):

• Podcast Newcomers are Young
• Podcast Newcomers Are More Female
• Podcast Newcomers Are More Diverse

& finding their favorites (but that seems obvious)

Your audience (for whatever you do) will change over time.

You’ll have your Day 1s & ride-or-dies. But you’ll also have churn.

If you don’t update your mental picture of the audience, you’re at risk of alienation and irrelevance.

& remember:

There is always someone having their day one experience with you.

This mission “for the benefit of humanity” is incomprehensible. It’s like “don’t be evil” or “zombie flam brittlewurst,” which is a phrase I’ve just made up literally on the spot. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s impossible to run an organization against that because it’s not measurable.

-Azeem Azhar

There’s messaging that sounds good.
And there’s messaging that has substance.

The goal is the intersection.
A well-crafted message with meaning that is memorable for the audience it’s written for.