Evolving Media Part 1: Are You Pushing or Pulling?

Initially, social media platforms operated with emphasis on their social aspects. If you think back to the early days of Facebook user behavior was all about connecting with friends, family, and acquaintances. One was, in effect, pulling content from connections to fill a feed. The platforms relied on users creating or sharing content amongst themselves to drive engagement and screentime.

           In time, the rate of user created, and shared content has slowed down. When was the last time you posted a Facebook status? This has led to the rise of push-based content. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok can’t rely on your connections to keep you entertained. Instead, they recommend or show you content from elsewhere. You see this in Twitter’s recent attempt – now seemingly reversed – to make the default feed ‘for you’ as opposed to ‘following.’

            By taking a ‘pushing’ approach platforms gain the ability to determine the discourse which is a fancy way of saying that they can sell direct access to users’ feeds. Sure, X amount of users may follow brand A but, for a fee, the platform can place the brand’s content into 10X the number of feeds. The result is that paid social is the future for brands on platforms.

            The problem – if you’re the one buying ad inventory – is that the pay-to-play model on platforms reduces the number of moderate ‘winners’ on platform. Instead, there are a handful of brands paying for top or near-top billing. Think of this as the Ricky Bobby school of marketing – if you’re not first you’re last.