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Content is not king. It is important–vital, in fact–but it is not king. A new study from TrackMaven demonstrates that while brands continue to pursue greater content production strategies, they are getting less engagement for their effort. This is an outcome that a simple supply-and-demand analysis could have predicted, and it demonstrates once again why customer experience is the real king.

Even without examining data, it should be apparent why customer experience has a stronger claim to the throne than does content. Content can attract attention but it cannot hold loyalty. You do not stay loyal to brands that produce the best content but the brands that provide the best customer experience at the right price (excluding, of course, those brands were content is the product like Disney or FOX). No one has ever said, “The product is disappointing, but I’m not going to switch because the brand produces great content.”

In the consumer half of your brain, the idea that customer experience is more important than content seems pretty obvious, but the marketer half of our brains clings to the belief that content is the ruler. This may be a holdover from a time when creative Mad Men ruled our industry, but media has splintered, the number of channels has risen, and the content available to consumers has exploded. The marketing equation that worked in the era when an advertiser on “I Love Lucy” could reach 70% of households is different than the one today with millions of websites, YouTube channels, Spotify lists, blogs, mobile apps, Video on Demand, streaming and cable channels.