Hasan’s Lemma To The Poreh–Zeevi Algorithm By Sleem Hasan…
Hasan’s Lemma to the Poreh–Zeevi Algorithm
There is a well-known equation familiar to students of mathematics and economics alike:
V = Q × P
where V represents value, Q represents quantity, and P represents price.
For example, if a shopping basket contains five bananas, each worth five dollars, the total value equals twenty-five dollars.
At first glance, this equation appears intuitive and practical. Yet, mathematically, it is one equation in three variables, leaving two unknowns. This makes it unsolvable in its pure form—an inherent mathematical inexactitude. This problem has occupied my thinking for many years, particularly since becoming involved in a technology venture that sought to address this exact challenge: the pricing of digital content.
This inexactitude lies at the heart of the internet economy. It explains why companies such as Meta and Google have risen to dominance. They thrive precisely because value is created and consumed without price clarity.
The Central Question
I began asking a simple but crucial question:
“When was the last time you walked into any shop—physical or digital—to buy a product, good, or service that did not have a price (P)?”
The answer was always the same: never.
And yet, when one enters the largest digital marketplace in existence—one generating more than $10 billion in daily turnover—there are no prices. Here lies the contradiction: an economy built on value but without transparent pricing. The question becomes:
“How does the world of digital content monetize today?”
The answer is that it does so through two crude, surrogate mechanisms—neither scientific, nor mathematical:
Subscriptions
Advertising
Both, however, are faltering.
The Breakdown of Subscriptions
There are hundreds of millions of publishers worldwide (270 million bloggers alone), producing content generated both by humans and increasingly by machines, such as ChatGPT.
Take one well-known publisher, the Financial Times. Out of a global population of 8–10 billion people, it has only 1–1.3 million paid subscribers. Yet, more than 40 million unique IP addresses visit its site monthly. This equates to nearly half a billion visits per year, but only a fraction of visitors pay.
Even if the FT were able to convert just 1% of its bounce rate, subscriptions would grow fivefold. This problem is not unique to the Financial Times—it is endemic to digital publishing.
The Advertising Duopoly
Global advertising expenditure ranges between $483 billion and $1 trillion annually. Yet, this massive sum is dominated by a duopoly: Meta and Google together capture 50–70% of the total spend. Amazon now emerges as a third force, holding nearly 8% market share.
The implication is stark: the average publisher cannot meaningfully monetize because the vast majority of value is captured by the tech giants.
The Poreh–Zeevi Solution
Enter Zzazz, founded by Illan Poreh. Together with Professor Zeevi, he developed what has come to be known as the Poreh–Zeevi Algorithm. Their breakthrough was to map the “content genome” through a polynomial function, and to build upon it a dynamic pricing engine.
The weightings of this polynomial represent different strands of the content genome—the building blocks of digital content. Imagine writing an article in WordPress, and as the text is generated, a price materializes dynamically, powered by the Zzazz API.
For the first time, content is not merely published—it is priced.
In essence, Zzazz reintroduces the missing P into the equation V = Q × P. What was once an equation with two unknowns becomes an equation with one. This transformation is not trivial; it is mathematical, structural, and recognized by none other than the Alan Turing Institute of the United Kingdom.
Hasan’s Lemma
Hasan’s Lemma highlights the essential role of pricing (P) as the core metric underpinning the Poreh–Zeevi algorithm.
Just as stock markets provide liquidity and price discovery for financial assets, Zzazz provides price discovery for information itself.
Why This Matters
The digital world has long consumed content based on popularity, not value. Price transparency changes that. It allows content to be measured, compared, and transacted in a way that reflects its true worth.
This is a paradigm shift.
I leave you with a question that underscores its urgency:
How valuable is sight to a blind man?