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The Death of the Direct-to-Consumer Subsidy
The decade of cheap acquisition is over. What replaces it is slower, harder, and more durable.
May 20249 min read
For ten years, a generation of brands was underwritten by the gap between the cost of attention and the value of a customer. That gap has closed.
The brands still compounding are the ones that treated media as a product line rather than a cost line — building an audience they own before building the catalogue they sell.