Non-media businesses have always got this: not all people spend the same amount of money.

So, why charge one fee? On one end, you alienate the people who want to pay less, and you don't take money from the people willing to pay you more.

The media business has changed. It isn't about fixed fees from distributors any longer. Everybody now lives in the world of ARPU and there's a clear funnel.

It doesn't matter if you are doing B2B deals where you get paid a flat fee for the library or (more likely) per hour of content watched in a month. Or if you've launched your own FAST channel, or D2C app, or are just helping YouTube make money by putting your content there.

Media businesses are waking up to the fact that they have the power to build a funnel where audiences can be monetized in different ways.

Audiences will discover your content if you go to where they are — YouTube, for example. The amount of money you make per viewer here is a function of your ad-revenue share.

The smarter media companies have figured out that there is a significant portion of this audience that is willing to engage with their content in a deeper fashion.

Having your own streaming service with a tier of ad-supported (but free) content can help you sign up some of these YouTube viewers for example — and lets you make more money from each one of them.

Depending on the power of your content (and your ability to market to them), you can also look to a portion of these free viewers to a subscription tier with more content (and ads) or a more expensive tier with no ads.

How about a subscription tier where content drops early — a day ahead of when it's available elsewhere?

What you have here is a classic funnel, allowing you to increase your revenue per user. Bringing folks outside the theatre into it, and giving them a reason to buy the most expensive seats.

It isn't about FAST vs AVOD vs SVOD — it's all of this and more.

If you've got this far, then you've also got to think about two other things: reducing your cost of acquiring a user and managing churn — subscribers who aren't paying you any longer.

Talk to us about how our platform not only helps you launch a complete streaming media solution (B2B and D2C) but how we help you deploy and monetize this entire funnel.