Every Media Company Needs an NFT Strategy — Now

NFTs are Not Art, They Are the Ownership Layer of the Internet

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Photo by Omar Flores on Unsplash

Tl;dr:

• Initially, I was as skeptical as anyone of the current NFT “craze.” I’m not anymore. I now strongly believe that NFTs are not only a thing, but they will likely be the killer app that drives crypto mass adoption.
• The key is that NFTs are not just digital collectibles, they are the “ownership layer” of the Internet.
• Mobility is a good analogy. In 1995, most people thought of cell phones as devices that would let you make calls away from home. They were. But the combination of mobility plus a host of additional technologies, ecosystems, consumer behaviors and business models resulted in an explosion of innovation that has changed the way most of the planet lives.
• Like mobility, NFTs have the potential to unleash tremendous innovation, all built on the foundation of portable, authenticatable digital property rights. What this means in practice will take years to become clear, but early examples of the utility of NFTs that are particularly relevant to media companies include membership/exclusive access/governance, play-to-earn gaming and virtual worlds (aka the “metaverse”).
• Also like mobility, a lot will need to fall into place, but technological prerequisites to mass adoption, including new scaling technologies and seamless fiat-to-crypto on/off ramps, are rapidly emerging.
• So far, most traditional media companies have almost no presence in NFTs. The most successful NFT applications, with the exception of NBA Top Shot, all feature NFT-native IP (Figure 1). This reflects both a lack of attention by big media and the pro-decentralization (and anti-establishment) ethos of the crypto community, which naturally gravitates toward NFT-native/crypto-native projects.
• In this essay, I argue that NFTs represent both a massive financial and strategic opportunity for traditional media companies.
• The financial opportunity seems easily to be measured in the billions of dollars. And strategically, NFTs hold the potential for media companies to re-capture lost consumer surplus; disintermediate the dominant Internet platforms; turbocharge fandom; provide a toehold into the burgeoning metaverse; and create a bridge to the future of blockchain-based media distribution.
• For big media, the risk of inaction is greater than the risk of action. They should be allocating resources now.

If you spend most of your time in the BAYC Discord server, wax on about cross-chain liquidity or have a tabby named Vitalik, you aren’t the target audience for this essay. But if you’re a normie like me who’s intrigued about what this NFT thing is all about — and the implications for media companies — hopefully it will jog your thinking.

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