Jonathan Barbone

What does $110 billion get you? 3.7% of the streaming market. Love this line from Michael Shields in his most recent newsletter. Ofc this isn't the only way to look at the value of those companies. But it is one way, and the purchase price is probably a bit high for the historical content value alone.

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One of the reasons many reasons I enjoy being an Advisor for the Revvim AdAi team - the conversation goes beyond “saving money.” The bigger opportunity is helping brands redirect inefficient spend into channels and strategies that unlock incremental growth. Great example here of performance media, awareness, and search strategy working together to drive outsized business impact.

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📝 Lessons from the niche frontier Alisa Cromer runs NichePublisher.biz, a resource for scrappy media founders, and she’s spent years tracking what actually works across B2B, city mags, alt weeklies, and hyperlocal startups. In the latest episode of Small Press, Big Ideas, we unpack: - Why newsletters might be your most underutilized revenue channel - What local media can learn from B2B - How to stop fearing technology and start using it - Tactical AI tools for audience building, content ops, and more 🎧 Listen today in your app of choice - links in comments

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🎮 Executing high-performance games marketing starts with understanding that your community is a compounding asset (not a "channel") 🎮 I talk to studio leads who treat community the way they'd treat a Facebook ad campaign -- meaning: something you turn on before launch and measure by conversion. The problem with this framing is that ad campaigns *depreciate,* but communities *compound.* After all, the Discord server you built during Early Access doesn't reset to zero on launch day. Nor do the streamers who covered your demo need to be re-educated on what the game is when the 1.0 trailer drops. And the players who gave you feedback during development don't forget that you listened (assuming you actually *did* listen, that is). Every month you invest in community deposits trust that pays dividends at launch and post-launch. Conversely, every month you skip is compound interest you'll never get back. The studios with the best post-launch retention almost never have the biggest marketing budgets. Instead, they're the ones who started talking to their players earliest, listened hardest, and such a deep relationship that the community actively wanted the studio to succeed. You can't buy or fake that, and you definitely can't manufacture it in the 90 days before launch. This is why marketing leadership needs to be in the room during pre-production, not bolted on at beta. The community strategy should influence the development roadmap, not the other way around. When your community tells you something about your game during Early Access, that's insanely valuable market data -- delivered for FREE, by the people who are most likely to buy your game. If you're building a community right now, great! But if you're planning to "start community building" three months before launch? You're already behind, and the math only gets harder from here (but I can still help you with that!). To your success, ~Jay

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🚀 YouTube’s “Made On” event dropped a lot of news this week, and I’ve been thinking about it non-stop. From AI-powered Creator workflows, broader A/B testing, shoppable links in Shorts and lots of others, the platform is clearly doubling down on helping creators grow real businesses. But the headline for me (and seemingly my entire network)? Dynamic ad insertion for Creators. This is huge for so many reasons: ✅ Creators & brands can now control exactly how long an ad runs ✅ Existing ad breaks in old videos can be swapped out for fresh ads ✅ Opens the door to new partnerships—without having to create new content On paper, it’s a game changer. But.. is it? Here’s what I’m wrestling with: Will brands actually jump at the chance to advertise inside a 2-year-old video? If yes, how will they value that inventory? And - maybe even more interesting - will they pay more for new videos? If advertisers embrace this, it could completely reshape how Creators monetize their back catalog. But it’s still an open question. I’d love to hear from people on the Creator side AND the brand/advertiser side:  How are you thinking about this announcement? Would you pay for placement in older content, or focus only on fresh uploads?

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Roblox now has more engagement than Steam, Playstation, and Fortnite combined. Everyone I've talked to in the game industry has been sleeping on Roblox for years and it will be the death of many studios. If AAA studios truly understood the state of the industry they would begin shipping their IP on Roblox tomorrow. A team of 3-5 AAA developers could build one of the best experiences the Roblox platform has ever seen in 1-2 months (as opposed to 2-3 years). They could begin iterating on what players engage with immediately on a platform with 150M DAU. You've now validated that it's something players engage with and built a community around the game all at a fraction of the cost. At that point, build the (now significantly derisked) game off of the Roblox platform. Unfortunately every game developer I've pitched this idea to didn't take it seriously (many reading this won't either). There is still an old school mentality rooted in the industry of "this is just how we do things". "We spend millions of dollars and years building a game just to cancel it because that's how my grand daddy did it" type mentality needs to go.

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VC firm Mindset Ventures has launched Mindset MusicTech, a new fund focused on early-stage startups in music, sound, and audio tech, especially those offering B2B tools. The fund aims to back companies that streamline creative workflows, enhance rights management, and deepen fan engagement, steering clear of the volatility of entertainment itself. It’s already invested in six startups, including Music·AI, Audoo, un:hurd, and OwlDuet, a voice-controlled music creation tool for artists. https://lnkd.in/gDqUT2wp #MindsetVentures #MindsetMusicTech #musictech

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Today's Next TMT sponsor, Looper Insights, has introduced a new product, the Sports Visibility Tracker, specifically designed to help sports programmers merchandise their streams amid an increasingly crowded and complex market for live-streamed sports. Looper Insights CEO and Co-founder Lucas Bertrand sat down with us for a video podcast explaining how it all works. https://lnkd.in/g5YFSNS5

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The Attention Economy is dead. Long live the Fandom & Engagement Economy. We’re witnessing a fundamental shift: today’s consumers (especially Gen Z and Alpha) no longer want to be broadcasted to. They want omnidirectional relationships. They want to belong to tribes. They want to co-create, be seen, and get something real in return for their time and loyalty. This isn’t just about music artists or sports teams anymore. Fandom is the new competitive moat for almost every brand. Think Duolingo’s chaotic TikTok presence, Gymshark building a global fitness community, Liquid Death turning water into a lifestyle rebellion, or Prime creating a movement around a sports drink. These aren’t products with fans — they’re tribes with products. In a direct-to-consumer world, attention is table stakes. Belonging is the new currency. -Technology has finally made it possible: -Real-time interaction at scale -Ownership & rewards via tokens, points, exclusive access -Co-creation tools that turn customers into collaborators -Platforms where fans can gather, flex, and feel valued The brands that rethink “fandom” — not as obsessive superfans but as mutual, reciprocal relationships — will own the next decade. The winners won’t just sell products. They’ll build communities people are proud to belong to… and actually give back to the people who show up every day. The Engagement Economy isn’t coming. It’s already here. #FandomEconomy #EngagementEconomy #CommunityLedGrowth #DirectToConsumer #BrandBuilding

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Week 1 (of 26) ways our shows are generating revenue: ---> Podcast (audio) programmatic ad insertion <--- We have worked with five podcast hosting platforms since we started our first podcast in 2005. We use Spreaker now whose monetization via programmatic ad insertion has been the best of the partners we've had to date. [contact us for both ways we can help monetize your content as well as how we handle administration of the billing, collections and bookkeeping for all of our shows - newradionet@gmail.com]

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Indie games are becoming Hollywood’s newest development pipeline. Creators are focusing on stories and worlds that can live across every screen. A small team with a powerful concept can now attract both gaming and Hollywood capital. That’s a massive opportunity for creators building original IP. #Scrpted #Indie #Games #Storytelling

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Go team Acast! Thrilled to announce our partnership with Spotify to unlock video publishing and monetization for Acast creators. 💚 💜 Our mission is to allow creators to grow and monetize their audiences wherever they are - and soon, this will mean bridging the gap between our platform and Spotify’s video ecosystem. We know that podcasting’s strength lies in its decentralized, open nature. And we are laser focused on making podcasting easier for audiences to find, and easier for advertisers to buy. This new distribution API will ensure creators can publish video to Spotify without compromising their independence. It will allow our podcasters - from the video curious to the video fluent - to share and monetize that video on Spotify's platform. We are proud to work with partners like Spotify to make podcasting better - and more valuable - for all. Coming later this year – more soon! https://lnkd.in/dzpAjQdH

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Great post about YouTube focused M&A from Shawn Kallet. My only additions are: 1. CEOs / Founders shouldn't automatically expect lucrative fixed term employment contracts anymore, too many people looking to get acquired think they'll be wanted as part of the deal or are indispensable (and will get a big salary). If you sell, you need to provide value to stay in the picture. 2. Being able to show competency in an offering and leadership capacity is essential. If your business is messy, you're essentially giving a company an excuse to walk away.

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Part two of our 2026 video prediction series. Today’s video covers Predictions #3 and #4, and both force a rethink of assumptions many teams are still carrying into 2026. Prediction #3: Gaming becomes the last major attention arbitrage in digital media. Gen Z spends an extraordinary amount of time inside gaming environments. Nearly 90% consider themselves gamers, and yet gaming still receives a fraction of overall ad budgets. That imbalance is the arbitrage. And look, I know it seems new, and maybe you should wait until more brands move to this channel....but that's the same mistake we all made with CTV. Waiting killed our opportunity. #CTV followed the same arc: attention moved first, identity and measurement followed, and only then did budgets flood in. #Gaming is now at that same inflection point, but with one important difference: The infrastructure is already there. Gaming has programmatic access, shoppable livestreams, commerce-enabled virtual worlds, and real attribution tied to real behavior. In 2026, gaming moves from an “innovation test” to a legitimate growth channel. And once budgets catch up to attention, the advantage disappears, just like it did with CTV. Prediction #4: AI becomes the most trusted “brand” in your customer’s life. Consumers are overwhelmed. Too much choice. Too much content. Too many decisions. (And yes, one too many winter illnesses.) When people are exhausted, they don’t research harder; they delegate. In 2026, they delegate to AI. AI already understands preferences, budgets, constraints, and context better than most brands ever could. And because agents optimize for the consumer’s outcome (not the brand’s), trust is built quickly. What’s changed is that trust no longer stops at advice. It’s moving into execution. With native checkout embedded directly inside AI interfaces (hello Instacart integration), agents don’t just recommend products. They build the cart and complete the purchase, often without ever sending someone to your site or app. Decision-making is increasingly happening through AI, and the brands that win won’t be the loudest or the cheapest; they’ll be the ones AI understands, trusts, and can confidently recommend. If you’re responsible for growth in 2026, the question isn’t whether these shifts matter. It’s whether your strategy, and your partners, are building for where attention and trust are actually moving. At Direct Agents, we're on it. Final predictions tomorrow. If you want the full prediction, I'll link it in the comments.

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Hashpurple's KDOL platform revolutionizes K-pop fan advertising by providing transparent crowdfunding for global fandoms, achieving 400,000+ downloads with 70% international users while transforming opaque fundraising into secure O4O campaigns across major venues worldwide. https://lnkd.in/gXyjcKmi

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The gaming capital stack is being rebuilt from scratch in 2026. GreaterThan Group is the latest piece. Here's the shape it's taking: Last week, Simon Zhu (ex-NetEase) launched a new holding company, GreaterThan Group. They are funding co-owned studios like Casey Hudson's Arcanaut Studios and David Goldfarb's BulletFarm. As I discussed a few weeks ago, Griffin dropped a $100M fund for indie game project finance. These two pieces of news show that game funding is alive and well. It's just been bifurcated from the traditional publishing model. Instead of all games competing for the same publisher capital and services, we've got two halves of an unbundled stack: Project finance (Griffin): Capital decouples from publishing ops. The fund writes a check, takes rev share, gets out of the way. Clean for the fund. Flexible for the dev. Puts the onus on the dev team to put the publishing puzzle together themselves. Equity-bundled (GTG, Kepler): Capital, ops, and ownership all-together, with the dev on the cap table. Much larger checks. Best example is Kepler Interactive: Co-owned by 10 studios, $120M from NetEase (Zhu's alma mater), just published Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Sandfall picked Kepler over bigger publishers specifically because of the equity terms. GTG is now running the same playbook at AAA-tier scale. So what happens to traditional publishers in this model? They move to work for hire models, as we are already seeing with teams like Midwest Games. Publishing is now a part of the external development service offering rather than a funding source, selling service offerings directly to studios or being employed by larger holder groups. The whole process of game development, publishing, and funding is becoming more modular. The teams that succeed will be the ones that are able to put the best spokes (service providers) on their hub (game). On the funding side, the two outlined structures are emerging are evidence of funding practices finally catching up with the diverse needs of diverse studios. Which one fits depends on the dev: Indies: Griffin-style project finance. Get the check, keep the IP, learn by doing. AA-to-AAA studios: Kepler/GTG-style equity bundles. Best for teams that have proven they can and are building a multi-game business, not just shipping one title. The takeaway is that capital is back in games, it's just no longer arriving as a single monolithic publisher deal. It's arriving as modular pieces that devs assemble themselves. Funding here. Publishing and marketing ops there. The winners will be the devs who learn to assemble. Capital is back. The question is whether you're ready for it.

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