Oh come on mate, I left an open goal for you there.
You could have scored an easy one by saying that their understanding of economic factors in the new media landscape is a relatively new field for study.
You could have talked about the aspects of social discourse and relationships between the maker and the viewer.
Fuck, you could have even framed what they do as artistic expression
But nope, you are too tied up in the misplaced metric of financial success.
And here’s why lectures about that would be next to useless… Their experiences are not transferable. You can’t copy what they do and expect success. That’s because novelty is a factor and you cannot teach that.
Compare that to the scientific method where everything relies on being exactly able to reproduce results.
Sure, there are plenty of purposes for academia, but what you suggest really isn’t one of them.