beyonce & mean girls explain the state of the industry
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Here’s a fun lil sheet of industry facts put out by Digiday, on the state of paying for news — AKA, can we really convince readers & viewers to give us media orgs money for reals these days??
Tl;dr, we better fucking try. Two key stats:
• 16 percent: The percentage of U.S. consumers who paid for online news last year. For comparison, 33 percent of American adults pay for a digital video service such as Netflix, and 22 percent pay for digital audio content.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_lossy/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F45c4ed90-2adb-42be-8f81-cf61215dffbf_498x193.gif)
(Live footage of Netflix rn)
• 89 percent: The percentage of digital ad revenue that Google and Facebook claimed together in 2016 ... leaving just 11 percent for the rest of the digital ecosystem.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_lossy/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0a5b25d6-e432-4665-978f-465db479b9cc_482x248.gif)
(aaaand here's live footage of “the rest of the digital ecosystem." that's us.)
Alarmed? Good. Now get thee a good subscriber-based revenue model.
Like Deez Links? Forward to the Aaron Samuels of media.