Media corporations in the present day are in a struggle for consideration. However profitable it isn’t the toughest half — conserving it’s. The previous playbook of competing on content material alone — extra exhibits, extra rights, greater libraries — now not ensures that audiences keep. In a world the place content material is turning into really infinite, what retains them is connection.
The truth of this horizontal scaling is presently enjoying out within the type of two very totally different offers. Netflix not too long ago introduced its forward-looking acquisition of InterPositive, the AI filmmaking firm based by Ben Affleck, which builds know-how to streamline manufacturing workflows whereas sustaining the artistic integrity of human storytellers. The opposite — a extra conventional horizontal scaling on an enormous scale — is the Paramount Skydance acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery — its studios, HBO, and linear networks — in a deal valued at roughly $111 billion. (In fact, the Paramount deal goes by after Netflix determined to drop out of the bidding for WBD.)
The InterPositive deal by Netflix is an early sign that creators are investing not solely in authentic tales, however within the instruments and ecosystems that assist how these tales are made. As know-how lowers limitations to manufacturing and expands the amount of authentic content material, there’s an excellent stronger crucial to distinguish by shifting downstream in direction of the relationships audiences type with the tales they care about; the connection they make with the content material.
Creating Connection
Connection is what transforms passive viewing to energetic belonging. Constructing connection and the associated economics fluctuate for various media corporations.
Aggregators — YouTube, Spotify, TikTok — present the platforms the place content material lives and is consumed and monetized. The reference to audiences is constructed by a extremely customized person expertise — so attuned to your preferences that you simply aren’t selecting the content material, the content material is selecting you.
Content material creators — Netflix, Disney, Peacock — spend closely on authentic storytelling and IP possession. If a extremely customized UX creates connection onscreen, these creators are in a singular place to construct it offscreen.
In a world the place we’re hooked on screens and starved for neighborhood, real-world gathering round compelling IP — the type that turns a narrative right into a shared ritual — is a powerfully deep type of connection, together with being a sustainable income engine.
Successful on Product
For aggregators, the benefit isn’t proudly owning IP — it’s proudly owning the system: the invention engine, the algorithm, the monetization rails. YouTube turned the dominant gateway into pay-TV by product excellence, not content material possession. Spotify operates on the identical logic — its AI-powered DJ learns your style, curates acquainted favorites alongside discoveries, and gives commentary between tracks, reworking the platform from a library right into a companion.
Each media firm has to compete like a know-how firm now — product velocity, knowledge methods, personalization should be within the DNA. (David Ellison, the brand new kingpin of the mixed Paramount-Warner, has been stressing the necessity for the corporate to operate as a tech agency at coronary heart.) A streaming platform that may’t match you with content material that feels proper, proper now, will lose subscribers earlier than the content material ever has an opportunity.
Netflix’s InterPositive acquisition underscores that this know-how crucial now extends past the personalization of the platform and into the artistic workflow itself. In a market flooded with content material, the businesses that win is not going to simply distribute tales successfully; they may even construct higher techniques for making them. InterPositive suggests Netflix is investing in creator-side infrastructure as a part of its broader aggressive technique.
Nevertheless it’s not sufficient to compete on know-how alone. Creators nonetheless want higher-value relationships and income streams to gas their content material, which brings us to the key weapon that aggregators can not simply replicate.
Experiential Worlds: The Creator’s Moat
There’s a deeper layer that creators can personal: real-world expertise. Connection in the actual world turns tales into neighborhood, and neighborhood into fandom that fuels commerce: merchandise, tickets, memberships, premium entry. These income streams allow long-term funding in authentic storytelling — an funding that aggregators, who profit from an abundance of creator-supplied and AI generated content material, merely don’t must make.
As early as 1957, Walt Disney’s synergy map confirmed how movies feed tv, music, merchandise, and parks — every reinforcing the opposite. The board’s current resolution to raise Josh D’Amaro, the drive behind its largest-ever international parks enlargement, as its subsequent CEO sends a transparent sign: in a connection-driven panorama, real-world expertise is the differentiator.
NBCUniversal has its personal model of this playbook. Common’s Epic Universe opened in Orlando final Could, and theme parks EBITDA topped $1 billion for the primary time in This fall 2025. A brand new Common park in the UK is subsequent.
Netflix is already shifting on this path with Netflix Home — immersive venues in Philadelphia and Dallas, with Las Vegas deliberate for 2027 — the place followers step into the worlds of Stranger Issues and Squid Recreation.
Netflix’s InterPositive know-how acquisition is the kind of deal that strengthens the complete stack of storytelling: from artistic instruments filmmakers use, to the mental property these instruments assist produce, to the immersive worlds followers in the end expertise. The deeper the ecosystem round a narrative, the stronger the connection it could possibly generate.
The query now shifts to Paramount: if and when its acquisition of WBD is accepted, can it translate the extraordinary IP it owns into an expertise, each onscreen and off, highly effective sufficient to compete in a connection-driven media panorama?
What’s your moat going to be?
Getting audiences to point out up is difficult. Getting them to remain is tougher. Aggregators will hold profitable on habit-forming UX and algorithmic discovery. For content material creators, the mandate is obvious: match this product competence, then lean into what aggregators can not simply replicate — real-world experiences that give audiences one thing to collect round, not simply one thing to look at. That’s the place the income lives — and the place the following nice story will get funded.
In an consideration economic system the place content material is just about limitless, the following part belongs to connection. For creators, real-world experiences that flip audiences into communities are the moat — and those who construct will probably be those who endure.
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