Evan Shapīro Joins The Show

It was great to have Evan on the show this week!

If you haven’t checked out his work, I highly recommend going to Evan’s LinkedIn. He is one of the most active thought leaders in the media space and is launching a media podcast in January called “The Media Odyssey”.

Now a few thoughts on the show.

First, as Evan pointed out, the headline from Business Insider (“Ads took over streaming this year, and they’re just getting started”) is actually a bit misleading. This is why it’s so important for an expert like Evan to help us make sense of it. In reality, while ads are becoming more popular in streaming, it certainly has not taken over streaming.

Streaming services are still in the early stages of figuring out how to best deploy ads and appropriately expand their ad inventory, with traditional cable and broadcast still making up the majority of ad impressions. As streaming services ramp up ads, watch out for more and more sports content, like Netflix announcing today that they’ll be streaming the Women’s World Cup.

Furthermore, Evan is right. Youtube TV price hikes are just standard capitalist behavior. I certainly understand the anger about Youtube TV getting more expensive, but if we’re honest with ourselves, our anger probably stems from the outdated dream that streaming was going to be the ultimate cord cutter.

Finally, the Duolingo - Netflix deal for Squid Game is a masterclass in marketing, as it leverages the popularity of Duolingo’s Owl to help promote both the show and Duolingo’s platform.

I loved Evan’s suggestion about increasing influencer involvement in news. My only worry about this proposition is that influencers are not held to the same journalistic standards that traditional journalists are, which could lead to a lot of misinformation.