Media companies today are in a war for attention. But winning it isn’t the hardest part — keeping it is. The old playbook of competing on content alone — more shows, more rights, bigger libraries — no longer guarantees that audiences stay. In a world where content is becoming truly infinite, what keeps them is connection.
The reality of this horizontal scaling is currently playing out in the form of two very different deals. Netflix recently announced its forward-looking acquisition of InterPositive, the AI filmmaking company founded by Ben Affleck, which builds technology to streamline production workflows while maintaining the creative integrity of human storytellers. The other — a more traditional horizontal scaling on a massive scale — is the Paramount Skydance acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery — its studios, HBO, and linear networks — in a deal valued at roughly $111 billion. (Of course, the Paramount deal is going through after Netflix decided to drop out of the bidding for WBD.)
The InterPositive deal by Netflix is an early signal that creators are investing not only in original stories, but in the tools and ecosystems that support how those stories are made. As technology lowers barriers to production and expands the volume of original content, there is an even stronger imperative to differentiate by moving downstream towards the relationships audiences form with the stories they care about; the connection they make with the content.
Creating Connection
Connection is what transforms passive viewing to active belonging. Building connection and the related economics vary for different media companies.
Aggregators — YouTube, Spotify, TikTok — provide the platforms where content lives and is consumed and monetized. The connection with audiences is built through a highly personalized user experience — so attuned to your preferences that you aren’t choosing the content, the content is choosing you.
Content creators — Netflix, Disney, Peacock — spend heavily on original storytelling and IP ownership. If a highly personalized UX creates connection onscreen, these creators are in a unique position to build it offscreen.
In a world where we are addicted to screens and starved for community, real-world gathering around compelling IP — the kind that turns a story into a shared ritual — is a powerfully deep form of connection, along with being a sustainable revenue engine.
Winning on Product
For aggregators, the advantage isn’t owning IP — it’s owning the system: the discovery engine, the algorithm, the monetization rails. YouTube became the dominant gateway into pay-TV through product excellence, not content ownership. Spotify operates on the same logic — its AI-powered DJ learns your taste, curates familiar favorites alongside discoveries, and provides commentary between tracks, transforming the platform from a library into a companion.
Every media company has to compete like a technology company now — product velocity, data strategies, personalization must be in the DNA. (David Ellison, the new kingpin of the combined Paramount-Warner, has been stressing the need for the company to function as a tech firm at heart.) A streaming platform that can’t match you with content that feels right, right now, will lose subscribers before the content ever has a chance.
Netflix’s InterPositive acquisition underscores that this technology imperative now extends beyond the personalization of the platform and into the creative workflow itself. In a market flooded with content, the companies that win will not just distribute stories effectively; they will also build better systems for making them. InterPositive suggests Netflix is investing in creator-side infrastructure as part of its broader competitive strategy.
But it’s not enough to compete on technology alone. Creators still need higher-value relationships and revenue streams to fuel their content, which brings us to the secret weapon that aggregators cannot easily replicate.
Experiential Worlds: The Creator’s Moat
There is a deeper layer that creators can own: real-world experience. Connection in the real world turns stories into community, and community into fandom that fuels commerce: merchandise, tickets, memberships, premium access. These revenue streams enable long-term investment in original storytelling — an investment that aggregators, who benefit from an abundance of creator-supplied and AI generated content, simply don’t need to make.
As early as 1957, Walt Disney’s synergy map showed how films feed television, music, merchandise, and parks — each reinforcing the other. The board’s recent decision to elevate Josh D’Amaro, the force behind its largest-ever global parks expansion, as its next CEO sends a clear signal: in a connection-driven landscape, real-world experience is the differentiator.
NBCUniversal has its own version of this playbook. Universal’s Epic Universe opened in Orlando last May, and theme parks EBITDA topped $1 billion for the first time in Q4 2025. A new Universal park in the United Kingdom is next.
Netflix is already moving in this direction with Netflix House — immersive venues in Philadelphia and Dallas, with Las Vegas planned for 2027 — where fans step into the worlds of Stranger Things and Squid Game.
Netflix’s InterPositive technology acquisition is the type of deal that strengthens the full stack of storytelling: from creative tools filmmakers use, to the intellectual property those tools help produce, to the immersive worlds fans ultimately experience. The deeper the ecosystem around a story, the stronger the connection it can generate.
The question now shifts to Paramount: if and when its acquisition of WBD is approved, can it translate the extraordinary IP it owns into an experience, both onscreen and off, powerful enough to compete in a connection-driven media landscape?
What’s your moat going to be?
Getting audiences to show up is hard. Getting them to stay is harder. Aggregators will keep winning on habit-forming UX and algorithmic discovery. For content creators, the mandate is clear: match this product competence, then lean into what aggregators cannot easily replicate — real-world experiences that give audiences something to gather around, not just something to watch. That’s where the revenue lives — and where the next great story gets funded.
In an attention economy where content is virtually endless, the next phase belongs to connection. For creators, real-world experiences that turn audiences into communities are the moat — and the ones who build it will be the ones who endure.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
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