Many marketing channels are “zero-sum,” meaning that if one company wins a piece of the channel, other companies cannot also use that piece.

Example: AdWords, where the price is set by the highest (dumbest?) bidder, and the few companies who get the good slots will get the vast majority of the clicks, whereas the other companies cannot get enough clicks to materially impact their sales.

Example: SEO, where the top three search results receive nearly all the traffic. Even getting 10 of the slots ranged 11-30 doesn’t add up to a fraction of what the winners get.

Counter-Example: Social Media. If company X has an awesome Twitter feed, that doesn’t prevent company Y from also having an awesome Twitter feed. Great tweets or content by X doesn’t prevent Y from to earning attention in the same manner.

You might conclude that it’s wise to try to win zero-sum games, because there’s “double” value. That is, not only do you get the sale, all your competitors don’t get the sale. But, especially with auction-style zero-sum games, this means paying top-dollar. Even then, the available inventory is limited, e.g. the top few slots in AdWords or SEO.