Digital life
fromHarvard Business Review
5 hours agoHow AI Is Threatening Platforms' Revenue Streams
Online activity and centralized digital services have created a platform-dependent society, influencing markets, labor, and consumer behavior.
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"Vending is NOT fully passive income. I'd call it semi-passive, like 70% passive. Social media makes it look like you fill machines once a month and money rains in."
Bier stated, 'It became abundantly clear: flooding the timeline with 100 stolen reposts and clickbait everyday crowded-out real creators and hurt new author growth.' He emphasized that X will not compensate for manipulation of the program or its users.
Despite how modern it seems to be, the truth is that the subscription economy has been around for some time, surprisingly dating back to around 1800, with the first magazine subscriptions, or the subscriptions for fresh British milk, around 1860. Over the years, the of subscription-based companies has turned the subscription model into an ideal business strategy since it provides unique benefits. In the same way, the adoption of this model across multiple industries has led to negative repercussions for the general public.
Social platforms promised reach, scale and frictionless distribution. In exchange, publishers ceded control of audience relationships, data and, ultimately, trust. Today, that bargain is not working. Social media is imperfect. Feeds are flooded with bots, synthetic engagement, misinformation and bad actors operating under inconsistent or nonexistent moderation standards.
Snapchat is adding a new way for creators to make money in the app, with creator subscriptions, which will enable Snap stars to generate direct revenue from their fans in-stream. Snapchat's subscriptions for creators will give popular Snapchat users the opportunity to monetize their content through exclusive offerings, while also experimenting with other forms of subscription offerings to maximize interest. As per Snap: Creator Subscriptions introduce a premium layer of connection directly into how Snapchatters already engage with creators across Stories, Chat, and replies.
Rather than undercutting prices to chase growth, many are leaning into higher-value positioning and introductory offers designed to convert (and keep) paying readers. Digiday's third annual Subscription Index found that publishers increased subscription prices by 5 percent year over year in 2025, based on a cohort of 14 publishers. (Bloomberg increased its annual subscription pricing by an eye-opening 33 percent year over year, up from $299 annually in 2024 to $399 in 2025).
Big TV networks and studios are finally shifting toward programmatic advertising - even for their linear TV spots. And this shift is attracting a new wave of advertisers and transforming what a typical TV ad break looks and feels like. For example, as reports, Comcast is starting to see net-new ad revenue growth from first-time TV advertisers. "The people coming in the door are small performance advertisers, but they've been doing social ads forever," says Travis Flood, Comcast Advertising's director of insights. "They don't have a TV ad."