Lens and Land

The move from renting attention, to owning it

Recently I’ve been musing on an interesting pattern I’m seeing. It started with Mr.Beast and his chocolates.

For those of you who don’t know, Mr.Beast is a big YouTuber. Now he got so big that advertisers started to be unable to pay his ad spot costs. This lead to him spinning out his own brands, advertising his own lines of chocolate, candy etc.

Essentially, this is switching from an “indirect” ads revenue (he advertises someone else’s stuff) to a direct ads revenue (he advertises his own stuff).

Through this, Mr.Beast now owns the “lens” (acquisition channel) and “land” (product itself).

Gates did something similar in the 90’s. Explorer was developed (the lens), and it was then used to siphon traffic to Microsoft’s “land" (Windows, and eventually Windows Server/Cloud).

It’s my belief that all business can be thought of through the notion of lens and land.

Now, what happens when the feedback loops get tighter? What becomes the limiting reagent when cost of construction (building), acquisition (social), and financing (cost) go to asymptotic zero?

My bet is attention