What's up guys and welcome back to wall street millennial on this channel, we cover everything related to stocks and investing you've probably seen shows like ancient aliens on the history channel, which goes through questionable theories of extraterrestrials, interacting with ancient human civilizations. These shows are generally considered as conspiracy theories and not taken seriously by most people. Despite this, the show has been a massive commercial success. Having just aired its 18th season.

Ancient aliens is one of the longest running shows on the history channel and has made tens of millions of dollars in its lifetime. The people behind ancient aliens and other similar shows are not crazed. Conspiracy, theorists, like you, might think, but instead they're highly sophisticated businessmen who are fulfilling a demand in the marketplace. In fact, there's even a publicly traded corporation dedicated almost exclusively to the production and distribution of alternative media content.

This includes things like ancient aliens, humanoid, reptiles and the study of immortality and similar topics. The company is called gaia and is listed on the nasdaq stock exchange with a market cap of over 100 million dollars in this video. We'll look at the big business of conspiracy theories and how gaia came to dominate this space. Gaia was founded all the way back in 1988, in colorado by a man named jerka raisavi.

He believed that the younger generation was increasingly turning to conscientious consumerism. That means that they make purchasing decisions based on their personal beliefs and values. Conscientious consumerism is nothing new. Many successful brands use this as a marketing tactic.

For example, the eyewear brand warby parker donates one pair of glasses to someone in need for every pair that they sell. If your product contributes to some positive social cause, consumers may be more willing to buy your product, even if it's a little bit more expensive than the alternatives they started off in the yoga business, producing yoga merchandise and dvd classes. Yoga is viewed by many practitioners as a way to increase both your physical and spiritual health. They wanted to expand into all areas of conscientious consumerism, including environmental sustainability, so they acquired a solar panel.

Installation company called real good solar, which they eventually sold in 1999. They listed on the nasdaq stock exchange over the years they leveraged their access to capital markets to try out various business ideas with mixed results, but in 2011 they finally struck gold when they launched their video streaming service. Gaiam tv, which is now called gaia, gaiam tv started off showing yoga videos, but this had limited growth potential. They realized that if they want to build a competitive advantage, they would need to make more unique content.

They likely saw success of ancient aliens and decided they would take it to the next level. Over the years they invested in a whole host of alternative science content, exploring aliens velocity of atlantis, ancient astronauts, immortality and a whole host of other topics. They put a big emphasis on expanding consciousness and tapping into spiritual or supernatural forces. They also have content about alternative medicine, saying that you can improve your health outcomes by connecting more deeply with the earth.

This makes sense, seeing as the company's name was inspired by the earth deity from ancient greek mythology. Much like netflix they've invested heavily on original content and now boasts 8 000 episodes of yoga alternative science and alternative history content, mostly focusing on aliens and ancient astronauts. A subscription to their service costs 12 dollars per month and is ad free. In recent years they have seen skyrocketing popularity with their subscriber base more than tripling from 200 000 in 2016 to almost 800 000 today, they've also gone global with viewers in 185 different countries.

Just about every country in the world has at least one guy a subscriber to put that into perspective. They have five times as many subscribers as cnn, plus when it shut down. The subscriber growth has translated to equally impressive revenue growth and in 2021 they reported their first ever full year of operating profitability. They were partly held by announcing an ambassadorship deal with the pop star demi lovato.

He was herself long believed in supernatural phenomena. Their growth in profitability has not gone unnoticed by institutional investors who have loaded up on shares in recent years. The majority of the outstanding shares are owned by hedge funds and other asset managers, including the investment giant blackrock, so how they become so successful. The majority of their content does pretty well outside the fringes of mainstream science.

How many people will actually believe that ancient aliens found ways to harness the earth's electromagnetic field to power their spaceships, or that the cia has been investigating archaeological sites to research? Those ancient technologies for many people, the real world, is too boring. Life would be much more interesting if there was some greater purpose beyond your 9 to 5 job. Nothing is more exciting than believing that there are extraterrestrial life forms living among us or unimaginable new technologies. That nasa is hiding from the public part of these conspiracy theories have been fed by a lack of transparency from the government.

For many years the us military has observed and documented so-called observed, unidentified aerial phenomena with capabilities far beyond even the most advanced human technologies. They kept silent about it until an internal report was leaked to the new york times under immense public pressure. They finally released a report in 2021 saying that there is no direct evidence that the unidentified vehicles are aliens, but they also cannot rule it out. Basically, they have no idea.

One third of americans surveyed by gallup say that i think some. If not all these vehicles are alien spacecraft. There are some things that still can't be explained by conventional sciences. The scientists will just tell you that they don't know gaia, gives you all the answers with certainty.

There are no caveats or nuances. They have no restrictions on how absurd their theories can become. Many psychologists believe that people turn to conspiracy theories to escape the uncertainties that they face within their lives. That's why these theories tend to be more prevalent during times of crisis.

This may partly explain the conspiracy theories around 5g and vaccines during the pandemic, with people having their lives completely disrupted. They are more susceptible to explanations, which they would normally write off as absurd. Another thing benefiting gaia is the fact that they have a near monopoly within their niche in their investor presentation. They both said their content would never see the light of day on mainstream ad-supported platforms like cable, tv or even youtube.

Advertisers are very concerned about brand safety. In the summer of 2020, thousands of brands pause advertising on facebook because they thought the platform didn't do enough to crack down on hate speech, gaia pushes theories that nasa is secretly controlled by the nazis and other equally outrageous claims. If many brands are hesitant to even advertise on facebook, what are the chances that they would associate themselves with? Something like that gaia has a huge advantage of being non-cancelable. They have their own subscription platform and produce the vast majority of their content internally.

They have 100 creative freedom to make whatever their audience wants to see, and they don't care what anyone else thinks it's undeniable that they're good at what they do. The reviews are overwhelmingly positive. Some people like it because it teaches them useful information about ufos and hypnotherapy. Other people know that it's all pseudoscience and disagree with it on a factual basis, but they like it anyway purely for the entertainment value either way.

People are willing to pay twelve dollars per month for their subscription, because it's content that you will never see in the mainstream media. Many people have criticized gaia for spreading harmful misinformation. For example, they produced a show hosted by david ike, who was kicked off of youtube in 2020 for a spreading of conspiracy theories relating to covet. Interestingly, both youtube and facebook allow gaia to buy millions of dollars worth of advertisements on their respective platforms.

Many of the big tech platforms claim to act on principle when they moderate content and protect their users from disinformation, but regardless of how much disinformation you spew, if you write them a big enough advertising check they'll, be happy to take your money. One question we may never know the answer to is whether founder, jerk ricevie actually believes in gaia's documentaries or, if he's just doing it, to make a quick buck either way. You have to give him credit for building a streaming service from scratch, which now has close to 1 million paying subscribers, and we have to put this into some perspective. Whether or not the theories are true.

There's no doubt that people have a lot of fun watching shows like ancient aliens and gaia and at the end of the day. That's what really matters, alright, guys that wraps it up for this video. What do you think about gaia? Is that harmless entertainment or dangerous misinformation? Let us know in the comments section below, as always. Thank you so much for watching and we'll see in the next one wall, street millennial signing out.