That phrase was, nearly verbatim, what critics had been saying about all advertising-supported media for decades. "In selling commercial time to advertisers to sell products," wrote Robin Anderson in the 1990s, "broadcasters are also selling a product—their audiences." Richard Serra, the artist and cultural critic, put it this way in 1973: "Television delivers people to an advertiser....It is the consumer who is consumed....You are delivered to the advertiser who is the customer. He consumes you."

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 1117