The answer to the games question is very simple from an information perspective - grazing, browsing and hunting. Movies, music and sports are grazing activities - the whole audience gets the same information "food" experience, which can easily be shared. Video games are a hunting activity, which provides a different experience for every player. Hunters share information about strategy and tactics, but there are no group experiences that the masses can discuss. It's the same reason nobody throws parties to celebrate google searches.
Grazing - the technology of plays, was developed early on by humans as a way to spread information and knowledge from one source to many minds. The audience can relate to the performers as people and vicariously follow and discuss their stories as a group. In video games, the performers are in the machine and the audience is one person.
Funny, I was listening to Lex interviewing Elon yesterday and they got into a discussion of video games. Even though both were fans, neither could come up with anything substantial to say about them except vague philosophical comments about the game or its characters. There was zero factual discussion of the actual experience of playing or the outcomes. It's very difficult to establish a shared experiental context.
Something about the Amazon experiment of creating / deploying ads for sellers jumped out to me as brilliant. Maybe it’s the idea that the very platform where you’ll be deploying the ads (as opposed to a third party contractor / agency) is also building them would make me feel confident they’ll perform well, but maybe it’s also because “advertising” is a subjective science (in my opinion).
If you’re an entrepreneurial mind who excels at product development, it’s frankly unlikely you also possess the innate skills to be a great marketer. In my experience the best marketers have a *different type* of creative skillset. This would potentially take a huge burden off of the seller, and you could always “in-house” the ads if you’re determined to squeeze out better performance. Anyways, I’ll be following that closely!
Also, come on with the CT scanned AirPods... so cool! Very awesome edition 👏.
Yeah -- big merchants can hire experts, but for small merchants, if it's the difference between no ads and some ads (even if they aren't the best), it's that zero to one type of situation.
Gaming - could it be something to do with how, relative to other big cultural products (even Star Wars/Marvel etc) more of the market share is taken up by teenage boys?
I think that used to be true, but not so much anymore. Gaming seems to be very mainstream now, with median age much older than it used to be, and a lot more women gamers too.
The answer to the games question is very simple from an information perspective - grazing, browsing and hunting. Movies, music and sports are grazing activities - the whole audience gets the same information "food" experience, which can easily be shared. Video games are a hunting activity, which provides a different experience for every player. Hunters share information about strategy and tactics, but there are no group experiences that the masses can discuss. It's the same reason nobody throws parties to celebrate google searches.
Grazing - the technology of plays, was developed early on by humans as a way to spread information and knowledge from one source to many minds. The audience can relate to the performers as people and vicariously follow and discuss their stories as a group. In video games, the performers are in the machine and the audience is one person.
Funny, I was listening to Lex interviewing Elon yesterday and they got into a discussion of video games. Even though both were fans, neither could come up with anything substantial to say about them except vague philosophical comments about the game or its characters. There was zero factual discussion of the actual experience of playing or the outcomes. It's very difficult to establish a shared experiental context.
I think that's the best framework for thinking about it that I've heard so far. Thanks Mark! 💚 🥃
Something about the Amazon experiment of creating / deploying ads for sellers jumped out to me as brilliant. Maybe it’s the idea that the very platform where you’ll be deploying the ads (as opposed to a third party contractor / agency) is also building them would make me feel confident they’ll perform well, but maybe it’s also because “advertising” is a subjective science (in my opinion).
If you’re an entrepreneurial mind who excels at product development, it’s frankly unlikely you also possess the innate skills to be a great marketer. In my experience the best marketers have a *different type* of creative skillset. This would potentially take a huge burden off of the seller, and you could always “in-house” the ads if you’re determined to squeeze out better performance. Anyways, I’ll be following that closely!
Also, come on with the CT scanned AirPods... so cool! Very awesome edition 👏.
Yeah -- big merchants can hire experts, but for small merchants, if it's the difference between no ads and some ads (even if they aren't the best), it's that zero to one type of situation.
And thank you, I appreciate it! 💚 🥃
Gaming - could it be something to do with how, relative to other big cultural products (even Star Wars/Marvel etc) more of the market share is taken up by teenage boys?
I think that used to be true, but not so much anymore. Gaming seems to be very mainstream now, with median age much older than it used to be, and a lot more women gamers too.
Re: games. Perhaps low-agency people don't play games?
🤔
I can picture it both ways (and maybe not exactly the same kind of games..).. Would be interesting to have some data on this!