The curve finally bends

If you pulled someone from 1750 into 2025, everyday life—live sport from another continent, a car that drives itself, a pocket device that speaks every language—would feel impossible. Reverse the experiment into 1750 and the shock fades. The point is pace. Tools now build the next tools. The distance covered per year is growing.

Think in DPU—a "disbelief progress unit." In the deep past, one DPU took ages; after agriculture, millennia; since the industrial era, centuries; now, decades and years. Strategies that worked even five years ago feel slow because we're no longer on the flat part of the curve.

S-curves, not straight lines

Every shift crawls, sprints, then plateaus. Looking at the last flat quarter and assuming more flatness is how you miss the sprint. In media, the sprint looks like compressed cycles: development, testing, localization, and creative iteration collapse from months to weeks or days. The bottleneck moves from making to deciding. Signals arrive fast—starts, completions, decay—and slow decisions leak value.

Attention moved upstream (feeds, CTV, AVOD/FAST)

Discovery used to be scheduled. You bought the slot. Today discovery is computed. Feeds and home screens decide what gets seen, making attention the upstream infrastructure everything else relies on.

This flips the old playbook: we used to deploy capital to buy attention; now we must garner attention first, then deploy capital to exploit and accelerate it. It's not taste; it's how the pipes work.

Two consequences:

• Living-room normalization (CTV). Creator/synthetic video sits beside prestige TV. Once short-form passes the "sofa test," it competes for prime sessions and seeds long-form worlds.

• Feeds beat pipes. If the feed can't find it, it can't pay it. The home screen is the new scheduler.

A simple framework for discovery

1) Pipe-first commissioning (design for discoverability)

Design to be found and held before you shoot. Build this into briefs and delivery, not after the fact:

• Discovery windows planned up front: SVOD → AVOD/FAST → FTA with sampler rights and promo clocks.

• CTV ergonomics: in-master ad-break markers, tight captions/mix, a dated localization path, clean QC.

• Metadata as product: thumbnails, IDs, tags, and synopsis variants per feed; test cold-opens and first frames.

• Feed-native companions: ring-fence a small % for Shorts/CTV cuts and reply-chain explainers that recruit starters and lift completion.

Delivery checklist: ad-break markers - captions/mix standards - metadata pack (IDs, thumbnails, synopses) - localization milestones - plug-and-play across feeds.

2) Measure quality of attention (AQS)

Attention Quality Score (AQS) = Depth (do people finish?) × Durability (how long does interest last?) × Participation (do people search, talk, share?).\ Use AQS for greenlights, renewals, and where you place your biggest promo chips. High-AQS shows get fuel; big opens without tails don't.

3) Stage the money with kill/scale gates

Commission in tranches. Proof → short order → scale-up, tied to post-Ep2 and post-Ep4 thresholds. Run a weekly cadence on starters → watchers → completers and decay. Scale what holds attention; stop what leaks it—gracefully.

4) Value what travels and what lifts the pipe

Modern value formula:**Value = AQS × Portability × Pipe-leverage.**

• Portability: languages, territory spread, export pricing, remake potential.

• Pipe-leverage: feed discoverability and CTV session lift—titles that move platform usage share create outsized value.\ Bake both into how you judge slates, not just how you write copy.

5) Put the operating system in the contract

A strategy that isn't in the paperwork is a wish. Encode data access, window flexibility, promo minimums, provenance/suitability, and CTV ergonomics. Use a lightweight Deal Fitness Score so partners optimize to the same reality.

Quick definitions (featured-snippet friendly)

• Attention Quality Score (AQS): A metric for quality of attention—Depth × Durability × Participation—used to guide greenlights, renewals, and marketing allocation.

• Pipe-first commissioning: Designing a title for feed and CTV discovery before production: planned AVOD/FAST samplers, in-master ad-breaks, captions/mix standards, dated localization, and metadata variants.

• Kill/scale gates: Staged funding checkpoints (often post-Ep2/Ep4) tied to completion/AQS; scale what holds attention, exit what leaks it.

• Pipe-leverage: The extent a title boosts platform usage share by being discoverable in feeds and sticky in CTV sessions.

Conclusion: Design for discovery, measure what matters, fund for speed

The big shift isn't about taste; it's about where the constraint moved. Discovery is computed, not scheduled. The winners design to be found and held, measure quality of attention instead of chasing vanity spikes, and fund in loops that match the pace of signals. Do those three things—pipe-first commissioning, AQS as your north star, kill/scale funding—and everything downstream (renewals, export value, catalogue lift) starts compounding in your favor.

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