Not your everyday stock to discuss but an interesting visualization

I was inspired to make this chart after reading a post on the future of digital advertising.

Programmatic digital advertising completely changed the Ad industry in the last 15-20 years.

Massive amounts of ad-dollars shifted online, and companies like Google and Facebook made billions of dollars.

In the process, they upended many industries (print media was the first casualty).

However, over time, smart publishers (like The NY Times) realized that they can’t beat Google and Facebook in their own game of grabbing and keeping user’s attention. Competing for Ad-dollars was a race to bankruptcy.

Instead, The NY Times pivoted to focus on creating content that their readers wanted, and asked them to directly pay for it. The readers obliged and NY Times today has 8.6 million paid subscribers.

This hasn't happened in a vacuum of course.

There has been a broader shift in the internet’s monetization model in the last 7-8 years - from Ad led to direct subscription (we can thank the likes of Netflix, Spotify etc.)

As this transition continues to grow, not just the companies themselves, but even the culture of the internet should undergo profound change.