marvinvista.com

Three major AI video launches in three weeks, and each company picked a radically different target audience:

...compelling AI video generation is very much here, and it's widespread: over the last three weeks we have actual AI video products from Google, Meta, and now OpenAI.

...it feels like each company has an entirely different target audience: YouTube is making tools for creators, Meta is building the ultimate lean back dream-like experience, and OpenAI is making an app that is, in my estimation, the easiest for normal people to use.

In this new competition, I prefer the Meta experience, by a significant margin, and the reason why goes back to one of the oldest axioms in technology: the 90/9/1 rule.

• 90% of users consume
• 9% of users edit/distribute
• 1% of users create

If you were to categorize the target market of these three AI video entrants, you might say that YouTube is focused on the 1% of creators; OpenAI is focused on the 9% of editors/distributors; Meta is focused on the 90% of users who consume.

...it's striking how this target market evaluation tracks with the companies themselves: YouTube has always prioritized creators, while OpenAI's business model is predicated on people actively using AI; it's Meta that has stayed focused on the silent majority that simply consumes...

I can’t overstate what a massive opportunity this is: every item in every YouTube video is well on its way to being a monetizable surface. Yes, that may sound dystopian when I put it so baldly, but if you think about it you can see the benefits; I’ve been watching a lot of home improvement videos lately, and it sure would be useful to be able to not just identify but helpfully have a link to buy a lot of the equipment I see, much of which is basically in the background because it’s not the point of the video. It won’t be long until YouTube has that inventory, which it could surface with an affiliate fee link, or make biddable for companies who want to reach primed customers. More generally, you can actually envision Google pulling this off: the company may have gotten off to a horrible start in the chatbot era, but the company has pulled itself together and is increasingly bringing its model and infrastructure leadership to bear, even as Meta has had to completely overhaul their AI approach after hitting a wall. I’m sure CEO Mark Zuckerberg will figure it out, but Google — surprise! — is the company actually shipping.

“…the company successfully navigated one paradigm shift, and is doing much better than I originally expected with this one. Larry Page and Sergey Brin famously weren’t particularly interested in business or in running a company; they just wanted to do cool things with computers in a college-like environment like they had at Stanford. That the company, nearly thirty years later, is still doing cool things with computers in a college-like environment may be maddening to analysts like me who want clarity and efficiency; it also may be the key to not just surviving but winning across multiple paradigms.”