Episode 213: The Audience Commodity

January 5, 2023

Central Thesis

Ad-supported media creates and commodifies audiences as its primary product, selling these segmented groups to advertisers to manufacture demand. This logic, while intensified by digital surveillance, is fundamentally embedded within capitalist media systems.

Key Arguments

• Advertisers Manufacture Demand: Contrary to the idea that advertising merely connects consumers to pre-existing needs, ads actively create desire for products.
• Audience as Commodity: Media companies do not primarily produce content, but rather they produce segmented audiences that are valuable to advertisers, and sell those audiences to advertisers as a commodity.
• Commodification Shapes Content: The need to attract and maintain specific demographic groups for advertisers dictates the style, themes, and even the very possibility of content. For example, Ms. Magazine was unsuccessful because it failed to deliver a commodified audience that advertisers understood or desired.
• Surveillance Enhances Commodification: Digital surveillance intensifies audience commodification by collecting detailed data, refining audience segments for targeted advertising, although it is important to consider surveillance is about better selling the commoditized audience.
• Digital Economy Reinforces Old Logics: The audience commodity theory clarifies how advertising remains central to the digital economy, despite the rise of surveillance and data collection, and it can also be seen in traditional media.

Notable Passages

• "That is, media companies don't make content as their primary product. They use content to produce segmented groups of people that cohere for a definite stretch of time in a form that can be analyzed, sliced, and offered to a variety of buyers. Uh. Hence, the audience commodity."
• "To people producing ad-funded media, the audience is their only audience. The only commodity. The only outcome of their labors that advertisers value at all."
• "Men aren't pictured in solidarity standing up against anything, not at least today, because the current mythos demands that men who aren't tough individuals are weak little bitches. It's funny to reverse messages, isn't it? Funny, yes. But one must appeal to one's audience, not as you would like to, but as they have been commodified."
• "The value of the audience, not just as a commodity, but as THE commodity."

Rhetorical Approach

Jim uses a conversational, almost rambling style, frequently self-deprecating and openly admitting his own confusion or biases. He combines personal anecdotes (his podcast as therapy, the hair gain ad observations) with academic theory (Dallas Smith's audience commodity, Shoshana Zuboff's surveillance capitalism) to build his arguments. He leverages examples from media (Dana Carvey, AMC's commercial breaks, Matt Dillon promoting tobacco) to illustrate his points.

Connections

• Episodes: Mentions Episode 66, Episode 7, Episode 29, Episode 95, Episode 127, and Episode 142, episodes related to Zuboff's book
• Thinkers: Dallas Smith, Shoshana Zuboff, Louis Franklin Powell Jr., Gloria Steinem
• Cultural Touchstones: Ms. Magazine, Frontline, Armani Gnome (Brad Parscale), Camel Caravan of News, Dana Carvey Show