Our digital payment systems can transform the creative economy

The internet is on the cusp of one of the biggest changes in its short history—frictionless and ubiquitous micropayments. Ever since the first ads ran in the mid-1990s on the World Wide Web, the primary fuel of online content has been advertising. Over the course of the last decade, the way people accessed the web changed from computers to phones and from mostly text to mostly video, and yet the primary way to make money from content has remained the same—advertising.

We are at the beginning of the end of that ads-only internet business model. The main reason is that Big Tech has so decisively won the battle for digital advertising that only a handful of big and super-niche media companies can depend on it solely. The ability of platforms to both reach infinitely large audiences and do it in finely-targeted slices means that few promotional methods can compete. They already account for more than 70% of advertising spend, globally, and the momentum is unlikely to change.