Pay as you share: content, platforms, and regulation

Arthur Campbell (), Geoffrey Go () and Chengsi Wang
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Arthur Campbell: Department of Economics, Monash University, Australia
Geoffrey Go: Commonwealth Treasury, Australia

No 2025-04, Monash Economics Working Papers from Monash University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Content creators produce original work, while digital platforms share secondary versions to generate ad revenue, often without compensating them. This imbalance may reduce incentives for creating high-quality content, leading to government interventions aiming to re-balance the bargaining strengths. This paper examines how enhancing content creators' bargaining strength affects investments in primary and secondary content and subscription prices. While it directly boosts secondary content quality, the intervention's impact on primary content is ambiguous due to the opposite awareness and pricing effects. Cannibalization between primary and secondary contents may contribute to or impede quality improvement. These dynamics hold across subscription and advertising-based models and the analysis extends to two-sided investments.

Keywords: advertising; online platforms; content sharing; journalism. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L52 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-04
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