What the hell do you mean by "Just building an audience with nothing to sell (beyond ads)" - you're attracting the audience with content - that's what you sell

What the hell do you mean by "Just building an audience with nothing to sell (beyond ads)" - you're attracting the audience with content - that's what you sell to those brains behind eyeballs and you sell ads on the side. Where is the problem with that? That's what media business was/is about for the last couple of centuries. How can you build an audience with "nothing to sell" anyways? What kind of audience is that, spam bots?