The Content Arms Race: 6 Reasons Winning Has Never Been Tougher

Content creators, whether they are the creative individuals behind future TV shows or the digital experts leading online campaigns, are confronted with a unique challenge: the competition for the attention of audiences. As more and more people pump out more and more content, we've entered a Content Arms Race. Why has the battle for attention gotten so tough? Let's take a deep dive.

Attention Is The Finite Resource

Decades ago, there were few players competing for the attention of large audiences. A city may have three TV networks, a couple of newspapers, a monthly magazine, and a few radio stations. At the national level, book publishers and movie studios also created content for consumption.

By contrast, today's content creators are in a global frenzy, fighting for mere seconds of a viewer's screen time against the deluge of streaming options, social media feeds, and the unending spools of user-generated content. The paradox is stark: as our means of distributing content grow, competition for our audience's attention grows more fierce.

When Seth Godin published his seminal book Permission Marketing in 1999, he described it as "a book about the attention crisis in America." He pointed out that:

"Human beings have a finite amount of attention. You can’t watch everything, remember everything, or do everything. As the amount of noise in your life increases, the percentage of messages that get through inevitably decreases."

Godin wrote his book for marketers, and he pointed out the paradox that they are in:

"In order to capture more attention and more money, Interruption Marketers must increase spending. [T]his increase in marketing exposure costs big money...spending more and more money in order to get bigger returns leads to ever more clutter. Catch-22: The more they spend, the less it works. The less it works, the more they spend."

At the time, Godin's book was seen as an argument in favor of Content Marketing -- a strategy comprised of creating helpful, relevant content that customers would seek out of their own accord--versus Interruption Marketing, the practice of interrupting content created by other people with unrelated advertisements.

For decades, Content Marketing was an effective strategy, especially as the digital revolution made content creation tools less expensive and easier to use. But now, just a few decades later, we're right back where we started: Attention is still the limiting resource. But instead of thousands of ads, we have millions of pieces of content competing for that attention.

We are still in Seth Godin's Catch-22, but instead of just marketers and media outlets competing for attention, everybody is now competing for everybody else's attention. And it's only going to get worse for content creators.

Here's why:

1. The Technological Hurdles Are Gone

Once upon a time, to create and distribute content to the masses, you need dedicated, expensive equipment, such as a printing press, a radio tower, or a television studio. You also needed dozens of specialized professionals to run that equipment. The technical hurdles presented a high barrier to entry for content creators, limiting the number of organizations (and yes, it required entire organizations) that could participate.

Not anymore.

Thanks to the advancements in technology, creating and sharing content is now more accessible than ever. With just a few clicks, anyone can publish their thoughts, ideas, or advertisements to a global audience. This means that the competition for attention has grown exponentially. It's no longer just big brands and media outlets vying for consumers' time and money - it's everyone.

2. Competition From The Audience

One of the biggest challenges in today's content-saturated world is that the audience itself has become a competitor. With platforms like YouTube and TikTok empowering audience members as creators, marketers and media outlets need to consider more than just their peers' actions. User-generated content, live streams, and real-time engagement have turned passive consumers into active participants.

3. Competition From The Advertisers

Decades ago, advertisers relied on media outlets to create content (translation: commercials) for them. In today's digital landscape, they have the capability to generate content themselves. In the past few decades, as digital tools have made it easier for companies to produce their own content, they have increasingly engaged in Content Marketing strategies instead of Interruption Marketing strategies. As a result, advertisers and media companies, which used to have a symbiotic relationship, are now competing with each other for the attention of audiences.

4. The Archives Are Accessible

In the past, the consumption of most content was confined to a short period after it was created. Television shows had to be viewed when they aired, movies had to be watched during the few weeks that they were shown in theaters, and newspapers were printed on paper that wasn't meant to survive for very long. (Books were the exception -- a rare form of content that could still be consumed decades after they were initially published.)

Today, technological advancements have made it possible for people to access not only millions of pieces of content that were published recently, but millions more that have been published in the past. There were two Hollywood strikes last year. My life was not impacted by them at all, because I already have a backlog of content that I will never get through. I haven't caught up on the latest episodes of Abbott Elementary, because I am still working my way through M*A*S*H.

During the pandemic, I started playing video games again for the first time in 15 years. I purchased a game called Steam World Dig, which I absolutely loved. After I completed it, I emailed the folks at Image & Form, the Swedish game developer, to let them know how much I enjoyed the game. I detected a sense of disappointment in their response as they encouraged me to try their newer Steam World games. After all, Dig was first published in 2013. The company had published four other Steam World titles since this game first came out, and they make far more money of the newer titles that sell at full price than they do off the game which I purchased on sale for $1.99!

Today's content creators are not only competing against today's content creators, but also yesterday's content creators - including themselves!

5. Generative AI Is Here

It is now possible for AI to generate content that is indistinguishable from human-created content. This means that there will be even more content available for people to consume, leading to increased competition for content creators trying to capture their audience's attention.

In fact, one digital thought leader believes that up to 90% of online content could be generated by AI by next year. Of course, AI will make it easier for you to make content; but with such a low barrier to its use, so can everybody else. The result, once again, is more content competing for the same limited amount of attention.

6. Recycled IP

Given how much content is out there and how hard it has become to cut through, it's no wonder that many companies are relying on established brands when they produce new content, from Marvel to Star Wars to Star Trek. The advantage of relying on established intellectual property (IP) is that you don't need to do as much work to cut through because these brands are already established in the minds of audiences.
Here's a list of the top ten grossing movies worldwide from 2023, according to Box Office Mojo:

1. Barbie
2. The Super Mario Bros. Movie
3. Oppenheimer
4. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
5. Fast X
6. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
7. Wonka
8. The Little Mermaid
9. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One
10. Elemental

With the exception of Elemental, all of them are based on well-known franchises or existing intellectual property (IP). (Christopher Nolan wrote an original script for Oppenheimer, but drew heavily from the book American Prometheus; even if he didn't, he was still telling the story of a real person, rather than creating a story from scratch.)

This phenomenon is not limited to movies. Here are the top ten selling video games of 2023, according to Gamespot:

1. Hogwarts Legacy
2. Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare III
3. Madden NFL 24
4. Marvel's Spider-Man 2
5. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
6. Diablo IV
7. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II
8. Mortal Kombat 1
9. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
10. EA Sports FC 24

All ten of these games are based on previously established IP. That's wonderful if you own the rights to a well-established brand. But if you don't, you're competing against content that has a significant advantage in the battle for people's attention.

Mo' Better Content Isn't The Answer

Given all these factors, it's no wonder that it has gotten so hard for so many content creators to cut through the noise. Are there exceptions? Absolutely! But the exceptions are just that -- rare cases that cut against the normal pattern.

So what should content creators do? Most advisors will offer advice like this:

• Create more content.
• Create better content.
• Create targeted content.
• Create optimized content.
• Etc.

The problem with all of these solutions is that everybody else is going to be doing them, too. Which means that they all ultimately lead back to the same Catch-22 that Seth Godin identified over three decades ago.

To cut through, content creators can't just create "mo' better" content. That only leads to a content arms race, where everybody sees diminishing returns. They're going to have to do something fundamentally different.

They're going to need to create community.