[...] Unlike traditional offline pipelines, online pipelines benefited from low marginal costs of distribution—sometimes as low as zero. This allowed them to target and serve large markets with much smaller investment.

Traditional media companies were the first to feel the pinch. Newspapers were upended by the Internet’s ability to distribute news to a global audience without the traditional distribution costs (printing, shipping, retailing, delivery). An efficient pipeline had eaten an inefficient one. The unbundling of classifieds and other forms of advertising from editorial content then stripped the newspaper model of a crucial monetization mechanism, as the more efficient online method for delivering targeted advertising outcompeted the traditional ink-on-paper method. Again, an efficient pipeline ate an inefficient one.