Essays

The unit economics of information

Every insight business sits on one spectrum, and its position is set by how many buyers share the same deliverable.

James Loudon · Framework · 6 min read

Since 2007 I have sold business information to executives at multinational companies. Not data, not news, but a structured kind of insight that companies pay for to underwrite their decisions. Most of it was focused in China, on China, and delivered through reports, presentations and CEO roundtables.

Early on I developed a private framework for this, which I call the unit economics of information. It places every insight business on a single spectrum. At one end sits mass-format B2C media. At the other sits fully bespoke consulting. A product’s position is set by how many buyers share the same deliverable.

On the B2C media side, the price runs from zero to two digits, but the quantity can run to five, six, seven, eight, even nine digits. Beyond that you are in hyperscaler territory, which is outside the scope of this piece. At the other end, take the local office of a global consulting network, or a boutique firm. It works the other way around. They might have 10 or 20 clients, maybe 100, but the projects run from five to seven digits.

On the B2C side, format is everything. Facebook is blue. The Economist is red. The eight o’clock news starts at eight o’clock, not five minutes late. On the consulting side, the work is specified and fully bespoke, and largely format-agnostic. You can present in PowerPoint or Prezi and nobody cares. You can arrive fifteen minutes late to a meeting, which is not ideal but not a showstopper. What matters is that the project is delivered to spec. There are no contracts on the B2C side either. You tap the app store, buy the paper at the kiosk, or tune in. With consulting, the contract specifies the deliverables.

The middle of the spectrum

The middle is where I have worked since 2007: structured B2B insight, sold through memberships and subscriptions. The buyer is an enterprise user. The format is predictable, which is what makes the economics work on the delivery side, but the experience has to feel bespoke. I have always thought of it as the bento box. You know the compartments, you trust the quality, and you can go à la carte later if you want more.

One buyer for one stream of deliverables puts you at the consulting end. A million buyers or more puts you at the media end. The middle ground I know best is 40 buyers of a product at 20,000 euros a year. Those clients get a deliverable that fits on one A4 page. Both the buyer and the provider benefit from the falling unit cost that syndication brings.

An example. Say you are 35 and want ideas on how to move your career forward. You can read a careers columnist in your favourite outlet, or follow someone on Instagram who does the same. They deliver in a fixed format, one to many. It might help a little, but not much, because they do not know you or what you need. The next level up is the middle. You join a programme with a set number of sessions, with one coach or with twenty other people in the room, for a one-off fee, a subscription or a membership. At the bespoke end is a personal coach whose entire job is you.

Where executive programmes sit

Now take the product I know best, the one I have built and sold for years: facilitated executive programmes. P&L owners or a function-specific cohort meet regularly under the Chatham House Rule, working through problems with peers who genuinely relate to them and can offer advice in context.

Here the price is four or five digits. The quantity runs between 20 and 200, depending on whether it is a tight peer group or a larger forum. The service comes with predictable parameters: X meetings a year, Y calls with the analyst, Z reports a month or a quarter. The business owner sets the deliverables, and they have to fit the market.

A good deal of effort goes into understanding each member and keeping the experience consistent and high in quality. A good programme director carries a whole collection of relationships in their head and works them constantly. The model borrows the format-led structure of B2C content and blends it with the bespoke instincts of B2B consulting. It tries to take the best of both. If it does neither well, it becomes a nice-to-have and falls by the wayside. The line between making a real difference and not is a fine one.

The format tells the member what they are getting into. You get your X, Y and Z. You sign a form, usually one page. You are invoiced up front and commit to a year. If you do not like it, you do not renew, but both sides expect a multi-year relationship. On top of that, you trust that the service will actually help you solve problems. It is not fully bespoke, because that is a different price altogether, but it comes close to the feeling of being a consulting client. That is the balancing act: an efficient operation that delivers real value at a sensible cost, while giving every member an experience that feels like their own. There are many ways to systemise that, and many ways to get it wrong.

What next, as AI accelerates?

The two best-known syndicated research houses, Gartner and Forrester, have sold four- and five-digit subscriptions to thousands of buyers for decades. They sit squarely in the middle of the spectrum and also play at the consulting end. In early 2026, Gartner’s shares lost almost a third of their value after a weak outlook. Forrester announced it would exit its strategy consulting business.

How much of this comes from a tougher operating environment for their clients, and how much from a reappraisal of what information is worth, now that anyone can use frontier and open-source AI models? ChatGPT only made its debut in November 2022.

My economics textbooks in the nineties treated perfect market information as a theoretical ideal, with everyone holding full knowledge and making rational decisions. Since I entered the workforce in 1999, I have watched information become more digital, more democratised, cheaper and more commoditised. In the past decade there was a business case for helping subscribers make sense of insight overload. From the unbundling came re-bundling.

I think we are in a transitional phase. The premium is still there if an executive sees the product as actionable intelligence that helps underwrite decisions, whether reflecting on past ones or anticipating future ones. But the burden of proof sits with the provider.

At the same time, listed companies are under pressure to deliver the savings they promised at their capital markets days, through multi-year cost programmes. That means cuts to external consultancies and subscriptions.

The B2B information industry has been through cycles like this before. But intelligence at this scale and this price may cause a bigger shift than any before it.

If yesterday’s work can be done faster, cheaper and better today, what is tomorrow’s premium?