Sue Boehlke:  The classic approach in media of creating a product that has high traction with an audience and monetizing it through subscriptions can be challenging in today’s ‘free content’ environment.  And the classic B2B media approach of connecting an interested, engaged audience to providers of products and services through advertising is also under pressure.  We are all looking for different ways to monetize our audience databases.  But even as we do, GDPR and privacy laws are adding additional constraints to how we collect and use the names in those databases.

 

So, beyond these two models, I think there is an opportunity for those of us with great traction and audience engagement to capture compelling information inside the content of our brands that is less about the ‘words’ and more about ‘numbers’.  We have a tremendous amount of data and value locked away in the ‘words’.