Technology trends in the media industry to keep track of for 2023

Media and entertainment industry generates a ton of revenue, staying among some of the fastest growing industries with a CAGR of 4,6%.

Those media people know how to deliver their products to customers as quickly as possible, and seem to not shy away from challenges, such as the pandemic, or advertising budgets going from print to digital.

Answering those challenges, media conglomerates are embracing digital transformation to the fullest extent, changing the way the content is produced, delivered, and consumed.

Let’s see what technology trends of 2023 they might benefit from down the road.

The media industry: demographics

Nobody would argue that we have now fully realized the convenience of all entertainment being available at any time, from any place.

Despite the recent economic turbulence, the upper wealth class of society continues to increase in size, meaning that there are more people demanding media services that focus on convenience and personalized experiences.

It’s as if that advice from generational wealth heirs is true: you get wealthy, then you pay for Netflix, avocado toast, and overpriced lattes.

And it’s also who those emerging misters and misses moneybags are. Millennials, being the generation relying on technology in their everyday lives, have enough work experience under their belts to secure high-paying jobs in health, tech, finance, and engineering fields.

Another stat worth throwing in here is continuous urbanization of earth’s population — which means there are more people commuting than ever before.

In conclusion, we got young adults working on increasing their income, who are very familiar with technology, and do not have much time to sit in front of the TV and click through hundreds of channels.

Let’s go through some of the technology trends that the media industry follows to cater to such customers.

List of major technology trends in the media industry in 2023

We start with the basic rundown to save you the suspense. The most prominent technology trends in media and entertainment industry for 2023 are:

• Shift to video content
• AR/VR emergence
• Artificial Intelligence
• Cognitive Computing
• Content personalization

And now, let’s break them down in more detail.

Shift to video content

Digital video continues to lure in more viewers: pandemic or not, people do enjoy it. According to HubSpot, 54% of consumers want to see their favorite brand or business use more video content.

And the media industry is here to respond to the demand.

For one, OTT platforms are stepping up their streaming services. They invest resources in producing better first-party shows and movies, get their hands on potentially successful IPs, and cancel content that doesn’t get much traction with the viewers.

Also, other participants of the media industry make use of video to grasp a larger share of people’s attention.

The behemoths of the media industry like The Verge, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times have been delivering quality video reporting for a minute, but new players such as Morning Brew are also leaning heavily into video content by pushing their TikTok and YouTube accounts along with their main content.

We even got a fancy term for it — D2C, which stands for direct-to-consumer marketing.

AR/VR emergence

Yeah, VR gear is still expensive to expect regular people to have a headset at home, but just the concept of blurring the line between physical and digital worlds is tempting enough.

Still — the entry cost will come down eventually, and some media is already trying out Virtual Reality experiences for their audience.

For instance, musicians can hold their shows in VR. It allows them to build better connections with their fans who don’t have the opportunity to attend the events physically.

As far as AR-related technology trends go, there is plenty of room to go crazy: augmented tours and ad campaigns, games like Pokemon GO, interactive narrative experiences — I’m sure those creative folks of yours will come up with something good.

Artificial Intelligence

Media industry generates a lot of unstructured data when doing their business, which poses a great opportunity for AI implementation.

Artificial Intelligence is a great way to structure, organize, manage the data, and then use it to improve the way the media industry operates.

For instance, media industry professionals might use AI tech to mine the user data, anticipate their behaviors and reactions, and offer experiences accordingly. That means targeted advertisements catering to specific interests, content recommendations, content created specifically with a certain audience in mind, and that sort of stuff.

Cognitive Computing

With the ever-increasing applications of automation in the media industry generates the growing demand for technology that can do even more.

But despite all of the recent developments, Artificial Intelligence can only carry the automation so far. Though intelligence is in its name, AI tech fails to provide something deeper than pattern recognition, like reasoning and decision-making.

That’s where Cognitive Computing takes up the torch. It hosts a number of sophisticated algorithms that strive to simulate human intelligence and use that to the media companies’ advantage.

For example, you can get a lot of benefit from having Cognitive Computing automate the production process. Through the analysis of video content such as movies, TV shows, or news broadcasts, the system can do all sorts of things with that content:

• Make trailers or highlight reels;
• Cut the inappropriate content out;
• Insert targeted ads in the contextually relevant places;
• Recognize celebrity faces;
• Crop the video to vertical aspect ratio for social media;
• Identify the opening and closing credits.

The best thing is that it does all of that with no interference from a human — this way, you’re pumping out more content to promote and support your existing library in no time.

That surely helps to respond to the increasing demand for video content from the media industry in the most effective manner.

Content personalization

With customers’ moods and desires changing constantly, the modern media industry environment requires businesses to adapt their content production.

Recommendation systems built on historical data can only take you so far. To predict what the customers like, you will have to dig deeper. With some help from technology.

You can categorize your content based not only on the genre but also on the stars that appear in it, and the overall mood of the content.

It is rather simple with cast recognition. You can have a system in place that analyzes the faces of all characters appearing in a movie, determines them as main and secondary characters, and categorizes the movie accordingly.

The mood is a bit more complex than that, but still manageable. A software powered by Cognitive Computing tech looks beyond the footage, picking apart the narrative structure, analyzing the score, and overall setting to determine the sentiment of the movie.

So, if a viewer wants to watch a detective drama with their favorite actor, or put on a game show to kick back — they won’t have to scroll through hundreds of non-relevant options.

The same point about relevance goes for advertisements. We know the viewers are less likely to skip an ad if it offers something that they may be interested in.

So how do we know what they’re interested in? Look at the content they watch.

For example, it would make sense to show them an ad for an outdoor clothing brand if they watch nature or survival shows. That’s how you add value to the viewing experience.

And then there are more technology trends

Those are some of the most prominent trends that are shaping the media and entertainment industry. Applying technology that improves the experience of viewers, puts the content first, and makes the production of that content more efficient is — you know, the thing.

But let me tell you.

It doesn’t stop there.

There is a growing need for media companies to embrace the metaverse concept to meet the needs of younger audiences, who are all about more immersive and interactive experiences.

Interested? Stay tuned! We got something cooking for those longing to learn more about the metaverse and how it can change the media industry.

Looking to get ahead of the media industry on those trends? Make sure to reach us at support@cognitivemill.com or fill in the form below. We will discuss your ideas and offer the best way to automate your video content production pipelines.