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Joseph said there is ample evidence of the financial benefits of charging commissions. In 2019, Google’s parent, Alphabet, drew an estimated 20 per cent of operating profits from Play, even though it was just 10 per cent of revenue. Apple bundles the App Store into “services”, a category that accounts for one-fifth of revenue, one-third of gross profit margin, and almost all margin growth.

Jamie said "YouTube still leads TikTok in overall time spent, including in the UK.YouTube's mass audience means it's getting more demographics that are comparatively light internet users... it's just reaching everyone who's online. The most-invested YouTube users probably "match or surpass" the engagement of TikTokers."

He added But "none of that's to say TikTok isn't a success." 

"TikTok was spending big to attract users, but they were not necessarily hanging around for long compared to other social media. Now we know that in the US and UK, TikTok has overhauled YouTube, and is reeling in Facebook... that's a huge seal of approval."

Alice said “It is a minority making a reasonable amount of money – ones that can command large audiences – and then there’s a very long tail."

She added "It definitely takes a while to build up scale and an audience. I think it probably works better for established writers from media outlets who have already built up a following with the security of having a large organisation as well as the salary before they transition across. It would be much harder to build up organically – it's not impossible, but definitely challenging."

"The journalists that have done well through Substack are really columnists, political journalists and opinion writers. Maybe there's a bit of a risk there that for a news organisation they lose talent – somebody who potentially will be able to leverage higher fees as a result. But media organisations have always competed with one another to retain big names and grow associated audiences. I think it's just another competitor."

Francois said “Springer is as much in search of growing its individual business as it is in search of business models and understanding of the digital economy. They must hope they can draw knowledge from [Politico] that they can draw to other parts of their business group.”

Soccer fans will be converted into online shopping enthusiasts, as is the case with all things Amazon. Amazon demonstrated savvy in getting the rights on the cheap, according to Francois Godard, an analyst at Enders Analysis, but it still needs to show it can exploit them to considerably expand its e-commerce business footprint.