Five years ago, when I was at Disney, I launched the advertising business around our YouTube channels in Italy.
Trailers, old clips, existing content from our biggest entertainment IP. Nothing original. No new production investment.
€3 million in the first year.
I remember being told that €3 million wasn’t much for Disney.
Fair enough. But the point was never the €3 million.
The point was that we had found a new way to monetize IP we already owned, on a platform we didn’t.
This week, a piece of news from ITV Studios brought me straight back to that experience. And together with two other stories, it made me think about where the relationship between media, brands and audiences is going.
1. OpenAI: from broadcasting to having a conversation.
OpenAI has launched Business Agents, allowing eligible brands to create their own conversational agents inside ChatGPT.
Instead of interrupting people with a message, a brand can now potentially answer their questions, help them explore products and support their decision-making process.
Think about the difference.
For decades, advertising has been about crafting a message and distributing it to as many relevant people as possible.
Now we have the opportunity to interact with individuals based on what they actually want to know, at the very moment they want to know it.
That’s pretty close to what I’ve been calling personalcasting.
But here’s the catch.
Who owns that relationship?
The brand may provide the knowledge, the product information and part of the experience. But ChatGPT owns the environment in which the conversation happens.
Personalization doesn’t automatically mean ownership.
And if brands approach conversational AI simply as another way to optimize conversion, we may end up with a very sophisticated version of the same old advertising funnel.
The interesting opportunity is much bigger than that: using AI to make the relationship genuinely more useful, relevant and distinctive for the individual.
2. The creator economy is becoming another performance media channel.
Digiday reports that brands are increasingly asking creators to demonstrate measurable business results. Traffic, conversions, cost per acquisition. Not just views, followers and engagement.
Nothing wrong with that. If you’re spending money, you should know what you’re getting in return.
But I think there’s a fundamental question we’re not asking enough.
What exactly are we buying from creators?
These people have developed original languages, built communities, created formats and, in some cases, established powerful entertainment IP.
And we’re increasingly treating them as another piece of the media mix.
A little more reach here. A better CPA there. A more efficient allocation of the advertising budget.
We’re discovering an entirely new creative ecosystem and using it to optimize the old advertising model.
The creator economy is not just a new place to buy attention. It’s a new place to build IP.
Of course, creators can be extremely effective performance media. But that’s one possible use of their talent, not the full extent of their value.
What if brands started investing in the development of original formats, products and experiences together with creators?
What if, instead of paying for temporary access to someone else’s community, they built something that could generate its own attention over time?
Different objective. Different business model. Different KPIs.
3. ITV Studios: an IP doesn’t need to live on your own platform.
And here’s the story that made me smile.
ITV Studios, through its digital entertainment business Zoo 55, has partnered with Pixability to commercialize advertising in North America around its YouTube content.
We’re talking about major entertainment IP like Love Island, The Voice and Hell’s Kitchen.
Advertisers can buy premium placements around these properties, including genre-based packages and dedicated programme takeovers.
A traditional media company is building an advertising business around its own IP on someone else’s distribution platform.
Sounds familiar?
That’s essentially the commercial intuition we put into practice at Disney Italy five years ago.
And what’s interesting is not whether €3 million was a big or small number for Disney.
It’s that the model worked.
We didn’t need to create another TV channel. We didn’t need to produce another series. We didn’t need to own the distribution platform.
We needed to recognize that our existing IP was generating attention somewhere else and that this attention had commercial value.
ITV is now developing that logic on a much broader scale, with dedicated commercial capabilities and a portfolio of globally recognized entertainment properties.
The distribution platform can change. The value of the IP can travel with it.
And I think this is where many brands should start paying attention.
One implication: what are you actually building?
Three stories. Three different parts of the same picture.
OpenAI is creating new ways for brands to interact with people.
The creator economy is creating new ways for brands to access attention.
ITV is creating new ways to distribute and monetize existing IP.
But there’s something that sits underneath all three.
The ability to build something people actually want to engage with.
We have more distribution options than ever. More tools to personalize communication. More creators to work with. More sophisticated ways to measure performance.
Great.
But what happens if we put all this innovation at the service of the same old marketing model?
We get better at buying attention. Better at targeting people. Better at optimizing our spending.
Do we get better at building something valuable?
I’m not sure.
My point is not that brands should stop advertising, stop working with creators or stop using third-party platforms.
Quite the opposite.
Build something distinctive of your own, then use advertising, creators, media partnerships and AI to make it grow.
Let the IP become the centre of the system, rather than another piece of content commissioned to fill a campaign.
And don’t confuse owning the IP with owning the distribution or the customer relationship. These are three different assets, and the most interesting business models will probably be built around how they work together.
Five years ago, we found a way to turn Disney’s existing YouTube presence into a new advertising business.
Today, I think brands have an even bigger opportunity.
Not just to monetize the attention their IP generates, but to build IP that creates new reasons for people to engage with them in the first place.
Stop renting attention only. Start building IP.
Watch this week’s 3 Business News, 1 Implication in the video above.
Content with a View — exploring the business of attention, intellectual property and the changing relationship between media, brands and audiences.
