Books, magazines, and even entire libraries are becoming freely available online. What would happen if all information was free? How would this change what you read, watched, and listened to?
The value would come in how novel, interesting and useful the media experience was to us. The company that best matched the media to me would be the most successful, and should be the most profitable. While there are wildly popular books, magazines, and films and these generate huge profits for their publishers/producers, how would this novel media system generate revenue?
We're tired of ads. We automatically filter out any advertisements that are not pertinent to what we're seeking, so advertisements would have to be brilliantly threaded into the media product for them to be most effective. So although ads are annoying, they can make media free. Don't care for ads? There's a simple solution, subscribe with a monthly cost.
One media solution would provide everything I need to stay connected, global web access, free web phone, free music selection, free tv & films, and free books/magazines/blogs. For maintaining an optimal network (or perhaps one of several competing physical networks) they would receive a share of the advertising revenue or media subscriptions.
While this may be appear to be a far off potential future, the web moves faster than anyone would have first imagined when it comes to evaluating potential media. Think about how fast Netflix evolved with it's system of DVD mailing, to instant downloading and how quickly Blockbuster adapted to remain competitive. It is my belief that this systemic business evolution foretells the future of media marketing and monetization.