[brycehamrick]

I've come to the conclusion that advertising is the only viable monetization model for most content businesses. This is not a new phenomenon, this is the same reason advertising is dominated television (even paid cable channels), print media like newspapers and magazines, and even in sports. The economics of it are pretty straightforward—customers simply don't value most content at what it costs to produce it.

I do a good amount of media buying and content production. From where I stand, the issue is in the consolidation of power. Content discovery and ad placement are far too closely related, which is bad for everyone involved (well, all but the ad platforms). Going directly to publishers is possible but difficult, it's not currently a scalable solution.

[Townley]

It's definitely viable, but I'm not sure about it being the only way.

Netflix shows that there's an appetite towards paying for content, and HBO furthers the idea while demonstrating how that same approach can be much more profitable.

For journalism side, premium, niche publications like The Information putting bets on the idea that users are willing to pay a lot of money for content as long as it's much better and more useful than the free alternatives.

[kadendogthing]

>Netflix shows that there's an appetite towards paying for content

Content that was originally created with advertising money (The Office). Whether or not Netflix will last the next 5 years is debatable and unknown.

[solstice]

> The economics of it are pretty straightforward—customers simply don't value most content at what it costs to produce it.

Well, but right now consumers don't even have the option of paying for single pieces of content as their only option usually is to buy the whole subscription to NY Times, etc. (The situation is a little like in the music industry where people had to buy a whole album to be able to listen to the 2-4 really good songs on it.) If it was easier for people to pay/tip for individual pieces of content, good content could amass a significant number of micro donations which in aggregate might become enough to cover the costs incurred in the creation of the content piece.

[Iv]

I like the proposal of a mandatory subscription: People who pay for internet access would also have to include a 10% donation, split between the content producers of their choice.

This is imperfect, but much better than the current broken system.