As we enter the new year, we wanted to look forward to what changes we can expect to see in the Media and Entertainment (M&E) industry in 2023.
On top of social and economic pressures, M&E companies are constantly challenged to increase revenue and reduce operating costs while still maintaining a fast time-to-market. Additionally, other obstacles have recently arisen from increased market competition due to continued mergers and acquisitions, changing consumer behaviors and new media platforms. With all this in mind, what areas deserve the most focus and investment for the upcoming year? Based on our depth of experience across the M&E industry, we’ve narrowed it down to four key trends to keep in mind for 2023.
REVENUE STREAM OPTIMIZATION
As a potential recession looms, it’s more important than ever for M&E companies to proactively focus on evolving and optimizing their revenue streams. One way to do so is by focusing on constructing ecosystems of interconnected experiences, enabling brands to collect billions of data points from customers in real-time.
Understanding consumers by analyzing the data they create gives M&E companies the opportunity to personalize the entertainment experiences they offer. They can leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) models to assist with content planning and recommendation engines to serve more personalized content to the right audience at the right time, increasing loyalty, reducing churn and maximizing revenue opportunities.
In parallel, companies can update and improve their current subscription and advertisement models. Many consumers have more than one streaming service subscription and there are more providers constantly coming to market. With many traditional content providers merging, this opens the opportunity for more cross-selling and service bundling.
MORE IMMERSIVE ENTERTAINMENT EXPERIENCES
Consumer behaviors and expectations have changed a lot over the last few years, impacting the types of immersive content and entertainment experiences M&E companies produce. Consumers have grown more comfortable with digital experiences and expect more high-quality and on-demand content than ever. For M&E companies to stay competitive, they must rethink the ways in which they engage with consumers.
MEDIA SUPPLY CHAIN MODERNIZATION
Many of the largest M&E companies have created advanced media supply chains that have become the backbone of their organizations, covering the entire content lifecycle from ideation, planning and creation, to media management, distribution and playback.
But just as product manufacturers have been facing a physical supply chain crisis, so too have M&E companies with digital media supply chains. As business needs and technologies have expanded over time, many media supply chains have become duplicative or overly complex due to patchwork integrations. Additionally, these supply chains face technological obsolescence due to limited feature scalability and antiquated user interfaces. As a result, it’s difficult for M&E companies with legacy supply chains to reduce operational costs and still meet the aggressive timelines the market demands. Because of this, expect to see many M&E companies in 2023 undertaking modernization efforts for their media supply chains.
A FOCUS ON CREATIVE TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION
Lastly, many M&E companies have slowly been transitioning from being solely focused on content and entertainment, to also becoming technology innovation companies. Since they deal with complex, creative workflows regularly, most have had to come up with creative processes and technology to address their back-of-house needs. However, M&E companies that want to thrive will need to continue showing their technical ingenuity in all areas of their business, including consumer-facing products and employee experiences.
LOOKING AHEAD
The coming year is sure to be exciting and filled with more ingenuity and advancements in the M&E space, while likely tempered with a deeper focus on minimizing costs and maximizing revenue to remain competitive with a potential recession on the horizon.
Moreso than other industries, in M&E the lines between technology and operations continues to blur as inventive solutions help creative companies stay ahead.
The innovative companies that seamlessly integrate their tech will be the ones that have the competitive advantage and come out ahead in 2023. With the combination of the right strategic investments to accelerate value, a holistic implementation approach and qualified resources, your 2023 should be looking very bright indeed!
