What Do Media Companies Really Want?

Technology giants like Facebook, LinkedIn and Amazon — along with the data analysts at legacy media companies like Disney and Time Warner — spend their days trying to seduce their audiences by creating ultra-targeted streams of news, television clips, opinions and other pop culture ephemera. When members of that same audience log on to social networks, Hulu accounts, Netflix or Amazon Prime they consume ads, videos and news items that cater to what the algorithms driving those services believe users want.