Another year of IBC has wrapped, and what a show it was. With over 1,000 exhibitors and over 43,000 visitors, there were certainly many things to discuss over the four days. We’ve rounded up all of the top trends tackling pivotal industry challenges, which were a focus for this year’s event.
AI Takes Center Stage
As expected, AI was a topic of many conversations; clearly, it’s made an impact within many different areas, from monetization, metadata enrichment, search and, of course, personalization. There was a lot of talk of opportunities around AI, such as the increase in efficiency and productivity. However, there is still a long way to go, as even though AI solves some problems, it can contribute to others, especially if AI becomes solely the input that feeds services, there needs to be some human intervention.
Monetization
Thriving in the FAST lane was definitely still on top of everyone’s minds, even after FAST took the limelight last year, it’s still a focus for many. As viewer demands have increased for linear-style watching, there are many opportunities for content owners and service providers to generate revenue from their archives. A key theme throughout monetization was personalization, not just for FAST but also for targeted advertising and how it can transform the experience for the user.
Personalization
It wasn’t just because we were there, everyone was talking about personalization. In many different aspects of the industry, it was a hot topic, such as personalization for FAST in the form of FAST 2.0, for advertisement with new customer data and more. With the ever-growing interest and capabilities of how AI and ML can help predict what and when viewers want to watch not only content but the type of content. Personalized playlists are becoming more accessible for services and with the likes of FAST, it won’t stop there, channels and AVOD providers are starting to be expected to offer personalization.
User-Centric Era
Consumers are more overwhelmed than ever, and now, with an average attention span of 8.25 seconds, more and more content providers are pivoting to short-form content. The popularity of TikTok and YouTube is nothing new, but the short-form content is now spreading into news and other areas to help appeal to younger audiences especially. The importance of metadata was apparent throughout many sessions during IBC, to help improve the content discovery and AI for viewers. By enriching metadata with AI, you can deliver highly personalized experiences, helping build positive relationships between services and their users.
The media and entertainment industry is continuously evolving, and service providers need to be able to adapt by always having the end-user in mind. At XroadMedia, we enhance the user experience by personalizing every viewer touchpoint. Personalization goes beyond the UI; it includes notifications, advertising, emails, retention offers, advertising and more.
If you’re interested in understanding more about how we deliver personalization for more than 50 projects in the media industry, reach out to our team here.
