Content‐Hosting Platforms: Discovery, Membership, Or Both?
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: ABSTRACT Our model classifies platforms in the “creator economy” —for example, Youtube, Patreon, and Twitch—into three business models: pure discovery (helping consumers search for creators); pure membership (enabling direct creator–consumer monetization); and hybrid (combining both). Creators respond to platforms' decisions by choosing their content design along a broad‐niche spectrum, trading off between viewership size and per‐viewer monetization. With a monopoly platform, moving from pure discovery to hybrid increases profit while inducing a more niche content design; moving from pure membership to hybrid can reduce platform profit while inducing a broader content design. We show how intense platform competition reverses these trade‐offs.
Source: The RAND Journal of Economics
Authors: Ben Casner, Tat‐How Teh
Institutions: Federal Trade Commission, Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
Subfield: Strategy and Management
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4416227098