M&E Is Investing More in Social Media — and It’s Paying Off
Adrian Pennington
TL;DR
Traditional media has officially stepped into the world of socially integrated media. Social-first content creators are emerging within Hollywood — and it’s working to capture the attention of social audiences and reach new viewers.
The “2024 State of Video” report from research specialist Tubular Labs found that long-form content is on the rise even on platforms like TikTok andInstagram, where M&E publishers are seeing greater engagement.
Broadcast, cable, and radio channels have generally used short-form platforms to drive viewers to long-form content platforms, but in 2024 traditionally short-form video platforms are now incorporating long-form content.
It hasn’t happened overnight, but media publishers have recognized the viewer and consumer power of social audiences — and resources are following. In an overview of media growth on social video, research specialist Tubular Labs finds mainstream media exhibiting “unprecedented growth on social video proving that investing in platforms leads to measurable ROI.”
YouTube has been Media & Entertainment’s bread and butter platform for many years due to its long-form, landscape content format, which is easily adapted from televised content. In 2023, YouTube uploads by M&E channels increased by only 5%, which is consistent with previous years; however, this long-term effort has paid off. With just 5% more uploads in the same time period, views organically grew +118% from 59 billion in January to 124 billion globally in December.
The “2024 State of Video” report also found that from 2022 to 2023, global M&E creators on TikTok posted 57% more videos and won 53% more views, receiving 36% more engagements.
While the US leads countries surveyed with 972 billion views of M&E-related posts on TikTok in 2023, Latin America is a fast-growing region. From 2022 to 2023, Brazil grew viewership by 32% (which is not far from the USA’s 39% year-over-year growth).
Movie and TV-related content on social media scored nearly 700 views on average per post last year, Tubular reports, although the leading growth category was related to Family & Parenting.
Sports viewership increased by 72% last year to a total of 71 billion views. Tubular expect this number to “skyrocket” in 2024 on the back of global sporting events, like the Paris Olympic Games.
Long-form Content IsMaking a Comeback
Since the rise of newer, short-form platforms like TikTok and Instagram, many publishers have refrained from posting long-form videos on those platforms. But in 2024 — that all changes.
“In the past, broadcast, cable, and radio channels used short-form platforms to drive viewers to long-form content platforms. However, in 2024, traditionally short-form video platforms are now incorporating long-form content, making it easier for creators to adapt content for different social platforms.
“Broadcast, cable, radio, and film channels who post long-form content have stuck to the status quo — uploading the majority of their content to YouTube and Facebook, but the latest data reveals a missed opportunity on short-form platforms.”
On TikTok, Tubular data reveals that of top publisher’s videos below the 30-second mark had the most uploads in 2023, but longer videos actually won the highest average views per video.
Tubular’s key takeaway: Experiment with longer videos on traditionally short-form platforms to earn more views and engagements.
Influencers & Commercial Media Align
In 2024, we see Hollywood stars and broadcasters integrating with rising social media influencers. These influencers have been used to fuel movie buzz, conduct red carpet interviews, and pave the way to show media companies how to connect with social audiences.
Rather than having to produce televised, digital, and social content, they can leave the latter to influencers, who arguably do it better.
One example: Recess Therapy is a social media series hosted by an NYC comedian who interviews kids on the playground. The host and two of his famous young interviewees debuted their skills on the red carpet during the 2024 Golden Globes interviewing actors like Margot Robbie and Jennifer Lopez.
The result: Facebook videos about Recess Therapy and #GoldenGlobes won 121% more average engagements per video than Golden Globes content posted by a leading US Entertainment News channel.
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This year, the creator economy will generate a quarter of a trillion dollars in revenue, per Goldman Sachs. By the end of this decade, the creator economy will produce a half a trillion dollars in revenue. Industry commentator Evan Shapiro believes that the future of the media industry is being driven by the creator economy and that there will be far more opportunities to make money there than in the traditional gatekeeper ecosystem.
That’s because of the industry-changing opportunity to go directly to fans and build communities of people who will pay for what an artist or creator produces.
Shapiro earns a living entirely from monetizing his work with online newsletters published on platforms like Substack, and counts himself as a creator.
He says the rest of the media industry needs to stop thinking about creators as influencers purely engaged in marketing and that the Creator Economy is driven by clicks on social media alone.
Taylor Swift and her self-produced, self-distributed Eras Tour movie, which made more than $250 million at the theatrical box office, is the poster woman for the creator economy.
Sure, these multi-millionaires represent less than one percent of creators working in the creator economy but Shapiro points to the hundreds of thousands “making middle class livings.”
The secret, Shapiro says, is that “creator-led enterprises do not need to be massive enterprises, with tens of millions of followers to make money. Creators from an array of disciplines are able to build their own small businesses based not on impressions but cemented by their ability to monetize the love of their work from their small, passionate communities.”
YouTube series Snake Discovery, for example, is produced by the owners of a pet shop in Minneapolis. It will generate more than $125,000 from its 3,500 Patreon members alone, on top of merch (which they sell a lot of) and various other sources of income.
Shapiro argues that most creator economy gigs are not dependent on billions of clicks or tens of millions of followers. Most of the best opportunities will come from businesses like Snake Discovery, that build small but mighty, highly engaged, super passionate and loyal communities around their work.
This leads Shapiro to state, “We are at the precipice of an explosion of consumption and spending in what I call the Community Economy — a segment of media focused not on pure reach, but rather built entirely around monetizing the passions of specific audiences.”
The economic power of the media universe is shifting to the creator-led “Community Economy,” he suggests. Anyone in media who wants to make money (so, everyone…) — “even those who do not run their own creator-led businesses,” says Shapiro, “will need to learn how to ply their trades in the creator economy. Those who do will find opportunities as great or greater than those of the past gatekeeper Media era. Those who do not, will not.”
Is the industry, as Shapiro suggests, on the verge of an explosion in consumption and spending in the creator-led community economy?
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Casey Neistat is most famous as a YouTuber, but that wasn’t his goal… his career “wasn’t an option” when he started creating videos.
April 8, 2024
Posted
April 7, 2024
International Content Hits the Inflection Point
TL;DR
Ampere Analysis founder Guy Bisson says the global TV and streaming industry is shifting away from Hollywood toward a global rise in demand for non-English content.
The shift, says Bisson, is part of a wider and more fundamental story about changes in the content business over the past 18-24 months in which the studios refocused on streaming.
This change in direction is the result of a general slowdown in growth opportunities and cost pressures, he says, that were partly driven by investors who increasingly turned against the studio direct model.
The major streamers now produce more than half of their content internationally, an inflection point from traditional US-centric production to a more diversified and growing global approach.
In an essential Town Hall presentation at the 2024 NAB Show, Guy Bisson, executive director and co-founder of Ampere Analysis, will illustrate how the global TV and streaming industry is shifting away from Hollywood toward a global rise in demand for non-English content.
The shift, says Bisson, needs to be seen in context as part of a wider and more fundamental story about changes in the content business over the past 18-24 months in which the studios refocused on streaming.
That change in direction is the result of a general slowdown in growth opportunities and cost pressures that were partly driven by investors who increasingly turned against the studio direct model.
In addition, wealthy western markets were saturated for streamers. Simply put there were no new customers to find. One way of finding new customers is to look at demographic expansion. Streamers have traditionally skewed to a younger audience but there is still headroom among an old audience.
The bigger opportunity lies in international expansion which is why streamers have trained their focus on markets with room to grow.
“Clearly the best way to target them is to provide content that will engage the audience in those regions and you do that by making content that appeals. That has been the big driver for the internationalization of content.”
The fact that it is expensive to produce content in the US as well as other countries like the UK is another driver.
“These three interrelated factors have all led to the internationalization of content. What it means is that the US is no longer the be all and end all of production, an issue highlighted during the 2023 strikes,” says Bisson.
“The changes in the business models that the streamers had planted created the environment in which those strikes took place.”
The Global Growth Opportunity
The Ampere boss is very clear that the US market remains “orders of magnitude bigger than anyone else in value terms,” but equally that the growth opportunity lies elsewhere.
There is still growth to be had in Western Europe markets, he says, including the UK, also Italy, France, Germany and Spain. Eastern Europe is showing growth too.
In Asia, South Korea has led the way with K-dramas like Squid Game; Japan is not far behind, being particularly strong in feature films (like Oscar winner Drive My Car).
In terms of where we’re going next, Bisson points to sub-Saharan Africa (in countries like Nigeria) and the Middle East.
He draws a parallel between trends now and that of multichannel growth when digital TV was introduced into the cable market.
“Over time thematic channels that were entirely programmed with US content evolved to become more and more local in terms of content, and continuity and presenters. We are seeing the same thing.”
Streamers are funding content that has to work locally and for global distribution. Local content means local language, local actors and locations but with a production value and certain aspect of story and narrative that is global in appeal.
“Drama is generally used as a spearhead just as it was in the early days of streaming but beginning before the pandemic streamers have moved heavily into unscripted to the point today where over half of first run of original commissions — across the board from Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Apple and more — are now unscripted.”
Check the Numbers
Full year comparison of the number of scripted shows produced in the US for 2023 against the average of the previous two years shows a 38% decline. Netflix and Amazon now generate more than half of their content outside the US, underscoring a decreasing reliance on American production ecosystems. This global pivot is not merely a shift in geography but may signal a broadening of narrative scopes and audience engagement strategies.
“The majority of content on their platforms are scripted today but the majority of first run commissions going forward are unscripted with formatted content favored because of its adaptability to international markets.”
Ampere forecasts global investment change to grow upwards by 30% across 2023-2028. Central and South America will see increased investment, along with Asia and MENA & SSA, whereas a leveling off and slight decline is expected in Europe and the US.
Markets like India have proven hard for international streamers to crack despite its attractive scale, in part because of the relative low value per customer but premium advertising tiers may help grow subscriptions.
“Ads serve a dual function in both the US and international markets which is churn protection, giving customers who would otherwise leave an opportunity to downgrade and stay onboard,” says Bisson. “Ads also bring in a new market opportunity around people who might not have subscribed at all due to cost pressure.”
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Post-Peak TV streamers will lean more heavily on international content, take fewer risks, and return to network TV format and scheduling.
April 4, 2024
Posted
April 1, 2024
Doors of Perception: How Consumers View the Possibilities for AR/MR
TL;DR
Amdocs’ “The Era of Mixed Reality Report” offers insights into user behaviors shaping spatial computing technology.
Consumers trust Apple when it comes to mixed reality. More than half of consumers feeling an association with Apple would make them more interested in an AR/MR headset.
Nearly 70% of consumers have limited understanding of AR and MR, and nearly a third don’t have a clue what it is.
New research by Amdocs reveals that consumers are eager for more advanced augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) experiences, particularly if Apple is involved.
“The Era of Mixed Reality” report from Amdocs found that users are looking for these immersive technologies to enjoy gaming experiences first and foremost, with shopping and exercise not far behind. However, there is also a significant knowledge gap when it comes to AR and MR.
“Just like the iPhone turned the internet into mobile, mixed reality will disrupt how we interact with our surroundings and immerse ourselves in new experiences,” said Gil Rosen, CMO of Amdocs.
“But first, we’ll need to ensure networks, connected devices and the content that runs on top work together seamlessly. With immersive experiences, there is zero tolerance for lag or quality degradation, and to make it amazing, the entire ecosystem needs to evolve as one.”
A staggering 67% of consumers have limited understanding of AR and MR. Half of consumers (49%) haven’t used it at all in the past three months. While a third (33%) are aware that AR can be used to gain digital insights while shopping or traveling, nearly a third of consumers haven’t a clue what AR or MR is.
Those that do are keen to use Apple product or associate Apple with AR/MR experiences, Amdocs reports. More than half (52%) of consumers felt an association with Apple on AR and MR would make them more interested in it, with 38% saying they would be likely to buy an Apple product.
Sixty percent of consumers, according to this report, would prefer to use a mixed reality approach in favor of a full VR metaverse (40%). More than half of users would be interested in trying the new technology, depending on how much it cost.
Anthony Goonetilleke, group president of technology and head of strategy at Amdocs, added, “These findings uncover several essential factors, first and foremost being the need for better education around what’s possible from AR and MR experiences, as well as preparing networks that can better support in-demand, intensive and seamless experiences. As AR and MR experiences become more widespread, we’ll see the rise of new-found ‘experience bundles’ that capitalize on specific personas, coupling connectivity with entertainment, education, enterprise and more.”
Spatial computing has been adopted by Apple to describe its latest “wearable,” Vision Pro. But there are those wondering if this isn’t the metaverse by another name.
March 28, 2024
Posted
March 28, 2024
Navigating the New Era of Social Commerce: Creator, Organic and Paid Content Strategies
TL;DR
The social commerce landscape has evolved from prioritizing follower counts to valuing the intrinsic quality of content, necessitating a strategic overhaul in social media approaches.
Dash Hudson’s 2024 social media trends report, “The Next Phase of Creator, Organic and Paid,” categorizes content into Creator, Organic, and Paid, each excelling in specific areas — Creator for engagement, Organic for community building, and Paid for extending reach.
Strategically boosting content, especially Reels for impressions and static posts for engagement, significantly enhances brand visibility and audience engagement.
The integration of generative AI across platforms like TikTok, Meta, and YouTube is transforming brand engagement strategies, offering personalized and interactive user experiences.
TikTok Shop is redefining social commerce, combining sales potential with social engagement in a democratized marketplace, underscored by its rapid growth as a major e-commerce player.
A seismic shift has occurred in the ever-evolving landscape of social media, moving us from a world where follower counts reign supreme to one where the content’s intrinsic value dictates its success. This transformation is a complete overhaul of how brands, creators, and marketers approach social media strategy.
Social media management platform Dash Hudson examines this shift in its 2024 social media trends report, “The Next Phase of Creator, Organic and Paid.” The report dissects current trends and offers a roadmap for leveraging the unique strengths of Creator, Organic and Paid content to forge a path to increased engagement and brand growth.
“In recent years, a new set of rules have emerged,” the report notes. “Short-form video has taken over, and there’s been a significant shift from socially-driven to content-driven feeds, as platforms deemphasize follower counts in favor of the popularity of posts.”
At the same time, audiences are becoming increasingly niche in the pursuit of their personal interests. This means that the traditional one-size-fits-all approach content creation is fading into obsolescence, replaced by content that speaks directly to highly specific demographics, maximizing engagement and ROI in the process.
Creator, Organic and Paid Each Excel
The report divides content into three distinct pillars — Creator, Organic, and Paid — and explains how each pillar excels in its domain. Creator content, with its authentic voice, drives engagement; Organic content builds community through genuine interaction; and Paid, or boosted, content extends reach beyond traditional boundaries, ensuring that messages penetrate the noise of crowded feeds.
Creators reach niche audiences through existing community relationships while generating more engagement than both paid and organic. On average, brands had seven creators partnerships in 2023, with most creators posting roughly eight pieces of content for each brand partner, the report found. But, most importantly, content posted by creators generated 16 times more engagement than content posted by brands themselves.
Organic content provides a regular cadence of fresh content to build brand loyalty and maintain an engaged community, serving as a good indicator of what resonates with a given audience. Nearly 40% of organic content is static, while 23% are carousels and 38% are Reels, and brands tend to post an average number of 11 pieces of organic content each week.
Paid, or boosted, content enables brands to get already high-performing content in front of highly targeted audiences. Boosted posts earn significantly more impressions than creator and organic content, highlighting its vital role in building brand awareness. Reels are the most common format of boosted content, at 50%, followed by Static (32%) and Carousel (18%). Around 9% of brands boost an average of one in every five posts, the report found. Some brands are even boosting up to 70% of their posts, but the brands that boost the highest percentage of content tend to have smaller followings.
Each of these pillars, Dash Hudson argues, “is even more impactful when working in concert with the others as part of a holistic social media strategy.”
This cross-pollination, the report finds, can drive meaningful results. “IAB tracked over 1,000 consumer purchase journeys, finding that advertising alongside creator content can accelerate the purchase funnel, showing a greater impact on building brand loyalty and a 1.3x greater impact on inspiring brand advocacy.”
A Synergistic Approach
More than ever, a siloed approach to content strategy is a recipe for mediocrity. The Dash Hudson report advocates for a synergistic model where “the interplay between Creator, Organic, and Paid content is not just encouraged but essential.” This holistic strategy amplifies brand presence, weaving a narrative that resonates across all platforms and demographics.
Dash Hudson conducted an analysis on the performance of creator, organic, and paid content across a variety of metrics to discern each content type’s strengths and their most effective roles within the content lifecycle.
Creator content shines in engaging niche audiences and boosting interaction rates, achieving a +34% higher engagement rate than organic content and a staggering +316% higher rate than paid content. This underscores its potency in fostering deep connections and stimulating audience participation.
Organic content, on the other hand, is pivotal in cultivating brand loyalty and nurturing a vibrant community. It outperforms paid content with +358% more comments and +104% more likes, and also surpasses creator content with +53% more comments and +18% more likes, highlighting its value in sustaining active and engaged user interactions.
Paid content is instrumental in expanding brand visibility, delivering three times more impressions and six times more video views than organic content, irrespective of the investment size. When compared to creator content, paid content generates seven times more impressions and video views, showcasing its unparalleled capacity to broaden reach and attract new audiences.
The power of paid content cannot be overstated. The report highlights how “strategically boosting content — particularly Reels for impressions and static posts for engagement — can significantly elevate a brand’s visibility.” Moreover, “entertaining content, when boosted, sees exponential gains,” underscoring the importance of not just what you share, but how it captivates your audience.
Overall, boosting content builds brand awareness, “breaking through the algorithms to place your brand directly in front of the eyes that matter most.”
Boosting Reels grows impressions, and boosting static content grows engagement rate — “the metrics each format craves, tailored to maximize the inherent strengths of each content type.”
Boosting entertaining content drives much higher performance across the board, proving that “entertainment is not just king but the ace in the deck for social media strategy.”
Leveraging AI for Content Optimization
Dash Hudson outlines significant trends and developments in social media platforms themselves driven by new technologies and changing user behaviors. The report highlights three key shifts: the integration of generative AI into platform experiences, the resurgence of social commerce with a focus on TikTok, and the growth of direct messaging as a crucial engagement tool. It notes that 64% of marketers currently utilize AI, recognizing its value and planning continued investment.
Specific AI enhancements across platforms are transforming how brands engage with audiences, Dash Hudson finds. TikTok has introduced an AI-powered “Creative Assistant” designed to aid in campaign creation, complemented by custom AI Chatbot Creation tools developed by its owner, Bytedance.
Meanwhile, Meta is unveiling generative AI tools that facilitate video and photo creation/editing from text prompts, alongside expanding AI chat personas to include celebrities like Kendall Jenner and Tom Brady, and is exploring new chatbot creation tools. This is part of Meta’s broader strategy to integrate AI across its advertising products.
Instagram is in the process of testing generative AI features, including custom sticker creation and visual editing tools for uploaded content. YouTube has launched “Dream Track,” an experimental generative AI tool that enables users to create music in the style of various famous artists.
These advancements underscore a significant shift towards more interactive and personalized user experiences, offering brands novel ways to capture attention and stay ahead in the ever-evolving social media landscape.
TikTok Shop: Winner Takes Alland Anyone Can Win
In the dynamic realm of social commerce, TikTok Shop emerges as a groundbreaking platform, blending the immense potential for sales with the power of social engagement. The Dash Hudson report illuminates this platform as “a democratized marketplace where authenticity and entertainment are paramount for direct sales success.”
A standout revelation from the report is TikTok Shop’s meteoric rise in the e-commerce domain, “ranking as the 12th largest e-commerce retailer in the US market and the 5th largest in the UK market in 2023.” This rapid ascent highlights TikTok Shop’s substantial impact and its capability to captivate both users and brands, solidifying its position as a formidable force in e-commerce.
Insights into consumer behavior reveal how TikTok Shop’s unique integration of shoppable videos and livestreams significantly influences purchasing decisions. The platform’s innovative approach to social commerce sales, supported by detailed audience buying behaviors and sales metrics, offers brands a clear blueprint for engaging potential customers effectively.
Technological innovations within TikTok Shop, such as AI-driven personalization and AR features for virtual try-ons, are enhancing the shopping experience, making it more interactive and personalized. These advancements are pivotal in attracting and retaining users, offering them a seamless and engaging shopping journey.
Looking ahead, the report provides a glimpse into the future of TikTok Shop and the broader landscape of social commerce. As we navigate this new era of social media, the fusion of creativity, strategy, and technology becomes increasingly crucial. This report not only sheds light on the current trends and strategies but also offers a glimpse into the future of social media marketing — a future where engaging content, powered by sophisticated AI tools and platforms like TikTok, leads the way.
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Driven by creator-led content, social commerce stands out as one of the most significant trends for marketers to watch out for in 2024.
March 26, 2024
The Fragmentation Situation: What Do Today’s Streaming Audiences Want?
TL;DR
SVOD price hikes may be approaching their peak: Consumers will likely balance costs and content with ad-supported tiers, contracts, and more bundles, but these may be short-term solutions to preserving profitability for streamers.
Social media and unbundling pay TV have trained consumers to expect more customized and personalized content and advertising. Deloitte suggest these are levers to build greater consumer engagement and value.
Thebiggest challenge for SVOD providers and studios is that they are no longer addressing a mass culture, but a fragmented landscape of competing digital entertainment options.
More evidence if it were needed that the video streaming model is shape-shifting under its own weight forcing players to adapt a much more sophisticated approach to market.
In its analysis from November 2023, Omdia found the number of SVOD services per home has declined in a number of markets for the first time. Market analyst Antenna in its latest “State of Subscriptions” report also finds that subscriber growth among Premium SVODs slowed last year to 10%. Deloitte in its “2024 Digital Media Trends” report found more than a third of Americans no longer think subscription VOD is worth the price they are paying.
On average, Deloitte says, US households spend $61 per month on streaming services. That’s a 27% increase over last year’s average of $48 per month. And streaming services might want to think twice before increasing prices further, as nearly half (48%) of the people Deloitte spoke with said they would cancel their streaming service — even their favorite one — if prices went up by $5 per month or more.
“With 36% of Americans surveyed believing content on SVOD isn’t worth the money, providers shouldn’t assume that advertising, bundles, and contracts are enough to help their business,” said Deloitte.
Its survey data shows that US consumers are questioning the value of streaming media while also declaring their unwillingness to ever pay for social media.
“This is a generational shift,” the report stated. With some eldest millennials in their 40s, “it’s no longer merely ‘younger generations’ who are giving their time equally to TV and movies, social media and user-generated content, and immersive and social gaming.”
Cancellations are already a problem for the industry, notes Chris Morris, analyzing the Deloitte report at Fast Company. Deloitte reports that 40% of consumers have cancelled a streaming service in the past six months.
Antenna found that churn had tripled in the last four years, pressuring net additions and growth overall. It also identified a category of “Serial Churners” — individuals who have three or more cancellations of a premium SVOD service in the past two years. That segment now comprises nearly a quarter of users.
Antenna attributes the overall increase in churn to the surge in mergers and acquisitions among the major streamers since 2019. Almost half of Premium SVOD Subscriptions (excluding Netflix) are in their first year of tenure, it notes.
On the plus side, 10% of cancellations resubscribe the next month, and one in three are back by six months after cancelling.
Antenna concludes that if the previous stage of the streamer business model was focused on acquisition to amass scale, the next stage necessitates a shift to managing their subscribers.
“This will translate to much more sophisticated marketing and product strategies, new success KPIs, and a whole lot more reliance on data,” says Antenna, which of course can deliver all of this.
Part of the problem is that viewer’s time is being more and more fragmented away from TV, away from streaming TV and onto social media sites and video games.
“The biggest challenge for SVOD providers and studios may be that they are no longer addressing a mass culture, but rather a fragmented landscape of competing digital entertainment options,” Deloitte execs state. “Trying to rebuild pay TV business models around streaming services could help reduce SVOD churn and slow attrition in the near term, but the long game for success will likely involve reinventing the medium to be more personalized, more shoppable, and more social.”
Providers will also likely need to widen their scope beyond TV and films to reach modern audiences, it suggests, and make their IP work across social and video games.
“The industry has had 20 years to understand the size and shape of the streaming disruption. Now they should come together to work to build something truly contemporary.”
This would include partnering with social media creators and influencers to facilitate “discovery, hype, and trust,” and using generative AI to improve the quality of content creation. However, Deloitte warns that this could also “lead to a flood of cheap and novel content that further dissolves the boundaries between ‘real’ and synthetic, commodity and premium.”
Simultaneously, free video stacking is still on the rise. YouTube’s continued growth as the top video service provider in key markets, is charted by Omdia. Strong growth in other social video platforms and Free ad-supported television (FAST) services sees free as the major streaming strategy that all major SVOD services are leaning into.
Also in Europe, the legacy of public service broadcasting remains strong, with traditional free TV and broadcaster video on demand (BVOD) services in high demand.
“The allure of social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram Reels has reshaped how individuals consume video content,” says Omdia analyst Maria Rua Aguete. “The appetite for free content is ever-increasing and the major streamers are clearly leaning into this as a strategy. With engaging formats and vast user bases, social media services offer compelling alternatives to mainstream streaming services.”
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Available now to download, “A Beginner’s Guide to FAST” will be presented at NAB Show by GRG Global’s VP of Media Research, Gavin Bridge.
March 25, 2024
Posted
March 19, 2024
Research: Tracing the FAST Trajectory
TL;DR
FAST is still an emerging industry, but all signs point to it being one that will remain part of the entertainment diet for the future.
The number of FAST channels in the US has skyrocketed to nearly 2,000 with no signs of slowing down, finds a new report from researcher CRG Global.
Forty percent of US adults regularly watch FAST and that figure is rising, making it an important part of the country’s media mix.
Gavin Bridge, VP of Media Research at CRG Global, will reveal the latest research and all you need to know about planning a FAST future at NAB Show 2024.Register here with the code AMP05 to attend.
Media execs know that Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV is a revenue generator — until they don’t. There’s a lot going on under the hood of linearly-scheduled, advertising-funded streamed channels. If you want to understand how to make the most of the opportunity, then a new report from CRG Global, in partnership with NAB Amplify, is your ticket to the inside track.
The session will explore the current state and future trends of free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST), a rapidly growing segment of the OTT market, and joining Bridge will be: Bethany Atchison, Vice President of Distribution Partnerships at VEVO; Michael Hyon Johnson, Director of Operations for ElectricNOW; and Michael Senzon, President of Digital for Allen Media Group (AMG).
The speakers will examine how, In a rapidly evolving media landscape, traditional television is being overshadowed by innovative streaming solutions.
FAST is one of these innovations, and has surprised many with its rapid growth in the last few years. This session with leading executives from the FAST space will examine the opportunities and challenges of running a FAST channel, such as content curation, personalization, discovery, loyalty, optimization, localization, and monetization.
The panel will also discuss the role and responsibility of platforms and publishers in delivering value to viewers and advertisers, and in fostering a healthy and diverse FAST ecosystem.
By the Numbers
The end result for attendees will be a greater understanding of what FAST is and, if not yet a participant, provide insights as to why FAST could be part of your media strategy.
CRG’s research peels back the layers on FAST, revealing not just its current state but also its trajectory in the Media & Entertainment industry.
For a start, about 40% of US adults regularly watch FAST and that figure is rising, making FAST a very important part of the country’s media mix, the report finds.
Researcher CRG Global also reports that just under half of FAST viewers (48%) watch daily, with a further 39% watching a couple of times a week.
It’s for that reason that many non-traditional video operators include a FAST service within their portfolio. That includes the Disney, Fox and NBCU, as well as Dish, Charter and Comcast, Amazon and even Google TV and TV set manufacturers like Samsung. FAST is the reason Walmart acquired Vizio.
Taking a deep dive into FASTonomics, the report outlines what FAST both is and isn’t. There are competing predictions for growth in 2024, it finds. Omdia suggests the FAST market in the US will hit $7.4 billion this year, and S&P Global’s Kagan estimates it to be $6.2 billion, while CRG Global reckons it to be nearer to $5.1 billion due to the weaker ad market.
Yet FAST remains shrouded in secrecy, the report notes. Not one service publishes domestic users anymore — Paramount used to do so for Pluto TV, but ceased during the pandemic.
Instead the industry has to rely on external analysts to assess the market and put a value on it, which can be confusing given the blurred definition of the FAST business model.
What is not in doubt is that the number of FAST channels has grown considerably since 2020 from 489 distinct channels available across major services to nearly 2,000 at February 2024.
When NBCU announced last June that it would be making close to 50 FAST channels available for licensing, it marked a new point in FAST history. The scale of the launch was unprecedented and yet is just the tip of the content iceberg that many media firms have at their disposal.
What’s Seen on the Screens
The report also details the type of audience that watched FAST, showing that while pay TV still provides utility to many, FAST is filling a need for many that cable is not.
“If a time-traveling FAST executive from the start of 2020 suddenly found themselves in 2024, one of the chief elements that would shock them — aside from the total number of available channels — would be how news has embraced FAST,” says Bridges. “It is the explosion of local news that would attract the most attention.”
Four years ago, there were three local news stations available on key FAST services. That figure is now 231, with Scripps, Cox Media Group and Hearst embracing distribution across a number of major services.
“The extensive local offering helping cord-cutters stay in touch with their communities and allow for local stations to reach the greatest possible audience,” the report finds.
FAST is still an emerging industry. But all signs point to it being one that will remain part of the entertainment diet for the future.
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Alan Wolk, Co-Founder/Lead Analyst at TVREV, will be moderating the NAB Show session “The Future of FAST: Lessons Learned and What’s Next,” Tuesday, April 16 at 3 p.m.
March 17, 2024
Posted
March 16, 2024
NAB Show Amplified: How Audio Entertainment Is Evolving, Expanding, Immersing
TL;DR
Jackie Levine, head of Television and Film at Audible shares her thoughts on evolving trends in audio entertainment.
Jackie Levine, head of Television and Film at Audible, will appear on the The Great Reset: Future of Podcasting from Hollywood and Beyond session on Monday, April 15, at 1:30 p.m. Moderated by eMarketer’s Jasmine Enberg, this panel will also feature Paramount Global EVP of Podcasting and Audio Steve Raizes and SiriusXM SVP of Comedy & Entertainment Radio and Podcasts Adam Sachs.
What excites you about your position at Audible as it relates to the future of this industry?
Jackie Levine: With the explosion of audio in the entertainment world, I’m excited about the exchange of ideas between audio, TV and film.
My initiatives at Audible give fans the opportunity not just to listen to, but also see original and classic stories come to life in new ways. We’ve become a destination for creators to expand their stories in so many ways and create franchises that start in audio.
What are the biggest trends impacting the community/industry right now Finding and originating breakthrough content with the vast number of great shows, movies, and podcasts at our consumer’s fingertips. Socially relevant, high-concept (and/or based on IP) content is currently trending.
What challenges does the community need to overcome because of these trends? We need to continue to strive to find high-concept projects and ideas to embrace the needs/desires of the consumer and make the highest quality material possible. How can we entertain AND make it meaningful? Some of what is performing well right now in-marketplace is a way to escape, for hopeful outcomes, and wins.
What’s one thing you wish more media pros knew about? I wish more media professionals would prioritize quality writers to trust they will deliver. There are so many steps and assurances needed as the media business becomes more and more condensed, which can result in selection decisions to be more fear-based.
Encouraging experienced writers and producers to do what they are great at without second guessing them could help all of us to successfully create more commercial and quality material.
As we approach NAB Show, OTT advertising is on the industry’s mind like never before. Nearly all the major broadcasters and streaming providers have embraced some form of advertising to increase ARPU and move to business models that are sustainable over the long term.
Server-side ad insertion (SSAI) is the central cog in OTT advertising because it joins streaming technology with adtech. Any issues with the SSAI and valuable advertising revenue is lost. On the other hand, SSAI has the ability to transform advertising revenues and empower providers to compete on the digital stage.
The key to maximising SSAI revenues is to allow broadcasters/customers to create an ad product that boosts the traditional benefits of TV by adding the modern benefits of digital advertising.
TV’s traditional benefits
Mass reach: Nothing offers mass reach in a short period of time like TV. It also has the ability to drive discussion and get in the public psyche – it creates “water cooler” moments that are increasingly hard for advertisers to find elsewhere.
Quality of delivery: Nowhere else can advertisers get a broadcast-quality 15-30-second ad with such high engagement and view-through rates.
Digital advertising benefits
Addressability: In the digital realm, advertisers expect addressability. Broadcasters and streaming providers must convince brands to increase spend on TV rather than YouTube or TikTok – which both offer fantastic targeting.
Programmatic: There is great potential to increase fill-rates by adopting programmatic. It helps secure the highest possible CPM for each available ad spot.
Measurement: Real-time measurement of ad views is essential for advertisers to tweak and improve their campaigns. It’s what they do across other digital channels so they want to do the same with OTT.
SSAI has the power to deliver an appealing blend of both worlds: the mass reach and viewer experience of TV and the advanced advertising benefits of digital.
Implementing SSAI to unlock the full value of OTT advertising can be complex. Here are the key considerations for broadcasters and streaming providers to enhance their advertising offerings and grow revenues:
Scale and Reliability
TV’s mass reach creates valuable water-cooler moments that advertisers are increasingly struggling to find elsewhere.
Live streaming and major sports have mass appeal and are therefore highly valuable. But applying addressability and one-to-one measurement at scale is impossible without a dynamic prefetch extension to your SSAI. Otherwise it is highly likely that ad-decisioning servers will time out and fail to return a response.
It’s important to be real about concurrency. Concurrency means the number of viewers watching at the same time. It’s not an average over a day, or a period of play, it’s minute-by-minute.
Mass reach is not only the domain of live streaming. VOD creates water-cooler fortnights. Some shows are a must-watch. Remember how Tiger King made Joe Exotic a household name in the space of a fortnight? Even though viewers are not pressing “play” at the same time, they are doing so in a short timeframe and putting extra demand on the streaming and advertising tech.
Maximizing inventory
In live sports, many advertising opportunities are missed because they’re so challenging to access. A half-time ad break in a soccer match can be planned for. The timing is dependent on the referee’s whistle, but the duration of the ad break and session ID is known in advance.
But what makes sport so compelling are the twists and turns, in other words: the unexpected. If a World Cup soccer match goes to penalties then all of a sudden an unplanned, but incredibly valuable ad break, is created immediately before the first penalty kick. We’ve seen audiences double between the end of extra time and the start of penalties.
Dynamic prefetch with contingency ad pods is essential to capitalise on these highly engaging and valuable moments.
Campaign management
SSAI is not simply a case of switching on a tap and letting the ads flow in. It must be integrated closely with the adtech ecosystem to deliver ad operations teams the right data to manage their campaigns. In order to consistently deliver the highest fill-rates, real-time measurement of ads viewed must be surfaced within a live 24/7 campaign dashboard.
In OTT, too much advertising is measured by ads stitched. That method is not sufficient for ad ops to make informed decisions about their campaigns.
UX and complexity
SSAI delivers a consistent, seamless viewer experience across all content types and devices. It effectively replicates the experience of traditional TV. It also goes some way beyond that.
SSAI must support all kinds of UX features, from clickable ads to scrubbing. Increasingly, viewers are expecting longer DVR windows, meaning the SSAI must be able to support whatever business logic is required to maximise the potential of advertising in live-rewind mode.
As you can see, SSAI is capable of delivering a huge amount of added value to OTT advertising propositions. As the industry’s reliance on advertising revenue grows, it is increasingly important that broadcasters and streaming providers offer the best possible ad product to the market in order to deliver better value and appeal to more advertisers.
Generative “Eno” Documentary Reshapes the Film for Every Viewing
TL;DR
“Eno,” about the career of famed musician and visual artist Brian Eno, was created as a generative, cinematic documentary.
Instead of a standard bio-doc, filmmaker Gary Hustwit and his collaborators have assembled a “modular” film that shuffles unpredictably between time periods and mediums to offer a composite portrait of its subject.
The technology is developed by Hustwit’s own startup Anamorph, which they call a “generative system” rather than generative AI.
A randomized documentary of the career of legendary techno-music pioneer Brian Eno, in which every screening is potentially and infinitely different, is the latest project to be served up by generative AI.
Enois a generative cinematic documentary: “Like a musical performance that’s different every night, the film creates a unique viewing experience for each audience that takes it in,” explains Matt Grobar at Deadline.
The 75-year old British music producer and visual artist who has worked with David Bowie, U2, Grace Jones and Talking Heads, and who birthed the ambient music genre and frequently mixes technology with art, is ripe for a video retrospective.
“I usually can’t stand docu-bios of artists because they are so hagiographic,” Eno told Variety’s Todd Gilchrist.
So, rather than charting a chronological path through Eno’s career, documentarian Gary Hustwit proposed using a generative system to create a film that would literally be different for every audience that screened it.
“The use of randomness to pattern the layout of the film seemed likely to override any hagiographic impulses,” Eno said.
If that was enough to pique Eno’s interest in the project, for Hustwit the approach was about provoking new ways of creating and experiencing a film.
“I like movies where you learn different things about the subject, but you, as the viewer, make the connections… I always think that’s a lot more rewarding, as a viewer. It’s a different kind of filmmaking, but it’s also a different kind of film watching.”
It helps that the first and last scenes of the 85-minute doc are always the same. Plus, there are certain scenes pinned to the same timeslot in each version, including a scene where Eno discusses generative art.
Everything else, however, can be different, depending on the material the generative program decides to insert.
“It’s kind of a modular approach,” Hustwit explained to Forbes’ David Bloom. “You can learn different facts about that person at different times in the film. In the end, you make the connections as a viewer.”
Like one of media artist Refik Anadol’s AI creations, Eno is going to be different each time it is screened. That poses a problem for film critics, Bloom points out.
To Deadline, Hustwit explained, “There are billions of different combinations that could possibly exist of this movie, and every time you watch it, you’ll never see that version again. So, it’s an interesting experiment. We can change the way that the form of film works [so] let’s talk about the possibilities.’”
Hustwit had another reason for making the film this way too. It’s a showcase for the generative tool (cutely dubbed Brian One) that he has built along with digital artist Brendan Dawes by their startup company Anamorph.
The tech was trained to select scenes from over 500 hours of archival footage and new interviews of Eno as well as animated visuals and music to produce the unique iterations of the doc.
Anamorph spent five years building the software, combining patent-pending techniques with the team’s own knowledge of storytelling. The company says it’s not trained on anyone else’s data, IP or other films.
“The main challenge was creating a system that could process potentially hundreds of 4K video files, each with its own 5.1 audio tracks, in real time,” Dawes tells TechCrunch. “The platform selects and sequences edited scene files, but it also builds its own pure generative scenes and transitions, creating video and original 5.1 audio elements dynamically. The platform also needed to be robust in a live situation, it wasn’t an option to have it crash. So, we did a crazy amount of testing. We can create a unique version of a film live in a theater, or we can render out a ProRes file with its own 5.1 audio mix and make a DCP from that.”
He also stresses, “This is a generative system, not generative AI. I just need to make that clear, because pretty much everything that’s been said about Eno uses the word AI.”
Advertising agencies have apparently expressed their interest, Hustwit reveals to TechCrunch, with one company wanting to make 10,000 versions of a one-minute commercial.
Rather than make its tools publicly accessible, the company wants to collaborate on projects so it can “consider the source material and the overall story goals,” says Hustwit.
“Our main goal is to get the idea out about this new kind of cinema and hook up with great collaborators to help explore this idea.”
Hustwit ponders what an experimental form-pushing director like Jonathan Glazer (TheZone of Interest) could do with something like this.
“You could make a movie that’s always on, always evolving, always changing,” Hustwit told Forbes. “I feel like Eno, it’s really kind of an opening conversation. What’s next? What can we do with this?
A streaming service such as Netflix — which has played with interactive forms of video — could easily generate a different version of the documentary every day, Hustwit added.
However, to TechCrunch he poured cold water on the idea, saying that streaming networks aren’t equipped to dynamically generate unique video files and stream them to thousands of viewers so that each viewer is getting their own version of a movie.
“When we premiered Eno at Sundance, all the big streaming companies loved it, but they also admitted that their systems can’t handle the tech involved… These streamers need to differentiate, and I think enabling the films and shows they’re releasing with generative technology is a way to do that,” says Hustwit.
It’ll likely take years before streaming services adapt to the technology. Until that happens, Anamorph is sticking to live events and theatrical releases.
“Something that the theater industry badly needs right now is a reason to get people to come in, and if there is a uniqueness about the live cinema experience, that’s one way that can be achieved,” he adds.
You may have heard that the creator economy is projected to grow to a $480 billion-industry by 2027, but did you know that there are now approximately more than 50 million creators working in the industry in 2024? And 4% of those workers earn more than $100,000 annually. Those figures are according to Kajabi’s The State of Creators ’24 Report.
This report focuses on the creators earning six-figures or more, assessing what they have in common to divine what makes for success in the creator economy.
How Creators (Really) Make Their Money
First, there’s more to being a successful creator than social media posts and striking brand deals (although creators do say those are key!).
To crack the six-figure ceiling, creators say they must diversify their revenue streams, with five (!) or more sources of income being a differentiator — and those making more than $150k annually report using at least seven to make that salary, according to Kajabi’s survey.
This is especially revealing because 66% of creators say they made the majority of their income from brand deals alone. However, these types of partnerships are fickle, and three-quarters of those who self-identify as top earners say that multiple revenue streams are crucial to financial success. “[D]iversifying their income streams empowers creators to turn down deals that could compromise their authenticity,” according to the report.
However, it’s worth noting that even authentic but successful creators say they can be tempted to compromise – for the right price. More than half of those in the $100k+ bracket said they might work with a brand whose values didn’t align with their own if the payoff was right (a specific number was not named).
So if you can’t go all-in on brand deals, what are other popular options? Those in the six-figure-plus club told Kajabi they make money from passive income (such as digital products, platform payouts and physical products) as well as coaching and consulting jobs, which they may do in person or online.
The most popular digital offerings include: online courses, digital downloads, subscriptions or memberships, and online consulting/coaching.
Social Is About Engagement (and Lead Gen)
The Creator Economy may be synonymous with social media, but they’re not one and the same. As Kajabi puts it: “Social platforms are great for building audiences, not businesses.”
Successful creators are able to translate followers into customers using lead gen tactics, leveraging audience interaction and community into cash generated on platforms that they own.
However, creators are not likely to abandon social media any time soon. Even six-figure creators would have trouble if they lost access to a platform. Losing YouTube would mean missing out on at least $50,000 annually for 42% of creators making $100k+. Instagram going under would account for the same loss for 38% of those surveyed; TikTok would mean the same for 37%; and 36% said the same would be true for Facebook.
Despite those numbers, half of creators indicated that they do not trust the very social media platforms that made them popular. They’ve been burned before, after all. Kajabi notes that it will be interesting to see if TikTok’s Creativity Program will shift creators’ attitudes.
Six-Figure Creator Demographics
The most successful creators as of 2024 are:
Male (57%)
Have a bachelor’s degree or higher education (80%)
Work full-time as creators (86%)
Create content for business and marketing, finance or real estate niches
They also tend to reach this financial tier relatively quickly. Four in ten of the six-figure earners reached that status within two years of working in the Creator Economy. Notably, the content niches that catapult creators into this range the fastest are beauty, fitness and gaming.
Their Thoughts on Today’s Hot Topics
Kajabi also inquired about these creators’ attitudes toward two of the buzziest subjects of 2023: AI and unionization.
AI emerged as a key differentiator for creators who’ve had financial success. They tend to utilize it twice as often as their counterparts making $99k or less, with 29% reporting that they leverage AI tools daily, and 43% say they use it weekly.
“Six-figure creators are bullish on AI in 2024 specifically to save time and ultimately help reduce creator burnout,” according to Kajabi.
Also, success has not made creators want to go it alone. Likely driven by their distrust of the social companies, almost 50% of these creators say they’d be interested in joining a creator union if one were formed. Notably, their interest was higher than that of their peers earning less cash.
The AI Broadcast TV and AI VFX & Motion workshops will also be offered at the 2024 NAB Show in Las Vegas, available to NAB Show registrants for $299. Both three-hour sessions are scheduled for Wednesday, April 17 at 2 p.m. (PT) and in the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center.
NAB Show and FMC also offer a corresponding certification for each course of study. Certification exams cost $149 and are scheduled for 45 minutes. Those who are certified will then be added to a published database of AI professionals.
“NAB Show is committed to empowering broadcasters and professionals across the full range of creative fields with the knowledge to integrate AI into their work, in a way that ensures they are able to remain current and innovative,” said NAB Global Connections and Events EVP and Managing Director Chris Brown.
These Are the Entertainment Industry Jobs That’ll Be Impacted by AI (Yes, Some for the Wrong Reasons)
TL;DR
CVL Economics surveyed 300 leaders in the entertainment industry about generative AI to investigate how uptake of the technology will likely affect M&E jobs in the near term.
A number of job functions are projected to be especially vulnerable: sound designers, 3D modelers and foreign language dubbers. Also at high risk: Those seeking entry level positions and contract work. Writers and vocal/music performers are expected to fare better, at least in the near term.
However, the associations that commissioned the study intend to use the information to fight back against the negative impacts of Gen AI uptake during their upcoming contract negotiations.
Do you think your job is safe in the age of Gen AI? I have some not-so-great news for you: Your boss’s boss probably doesn’t agree.
In Q4 2023, the consultancy surveyed 300 entertainment business leaders to assess how generative AI will likely affect the M&E workforce.
Respondents represented six sectors: the film, television, animation, music and sound recording and gaming industries. About two-thirds of those questioned agreed implementation of Gen AI is likely to “play a role in consolidating or replacing existing job titles,” according to the study.
Generative AI has come to the forefront of the public imagination “[a]t a time when several entertainment industries are facing challenges,” the report notes, adding that “the desire to increase productivity, cut costs, and identify new revenue streams will be top of mind.”
But the good news is that a majority of respondents said, “GenAI has already led to the creation of new job titles and roles in their organization and anticorporate GenAI technology will be responsible for the creation of new job opportunities.” (But that’s no guarantee that the scales will ultimately balance for workers in any industry.)
For context: “[T]he pace of AI integration into creative job roles is increasing at a rapid clip; between 2020 and 2022, for example, the number of job postings that listed the ability to use artificial intelligence tools as a desired skill increased by 122%,” The Hollywood Reporter’s Winston Cho points out in his coverage of the report.
CVL writes: “[C]reative workers will be facing an era of disruption, defined by the consolidation of some job roles, the replacement of existing job roles with new ones, and the elimination of many jobs entirely.
But We’re Not Taking This Lying Down
Disney Animation Technical Director Brandon Jarratt, who serves on the Animation Guild’s executive board and AI task force, told the LA Times’ Christi Carras that Local 839 will use the study to inform strategy and goals for upcoming negotiations.
The Animation Guild is not the only M&E union likely to follow the blueprint laid out by the WGA and SAG. CVL notes 8% of jobs in the arts, design, and entertainment have representation and collective bargaining. That figure is higher when you narrow it down to the motion picture and sound recording industries (17%) and broadcasting (11%).
CVL concluded that “[c]reative industry leaders are largely embracing GenAI technology, and most recognize that operational benefits in the future will come at a cost to many creative workers.”
The Animation Guild, Jarratt told Carras, aims to “help set the industry standard for what kind of tools are appropriate and … going to help artists, and which ones are going to hurt them and hurt their livelihoods.”
After all, “[t]he tool itself is almost never the issue,” Jarratt explained to Carras. “The studios are always looking for ways to spend less money. And if they feel like they’re going to be able to cut budgets in order to meet shareholder projections or whatever, then they’re going to try to exploit that in any way they can — and that’s where the fear comes from.”
Lest you think that fear is overblown: In November, DreamWorks founder Jeffrey Katzenberg predicted that Gen AI will replace up to 90% of film animation jobs, THR’s Cho notes.
“We’re seeing a lot of role consolidation and reduction,” Concept Art Assn. co-founder Nicole Hendrix told Cho. “A lot of people are out of work right now.”
As a whole, the media and entertainment industry seems more inclined to embrace generative AI — and more likely to be early adopters. CVL reports that 25% said they are currently using some kind of Gen AI, and nearly half (47%) indicated they are planning to implement generative AI soon, in some fashion.
CVL calculated that Gen AI is likely to disrupt “approximately 203,800 payroll jobs” in the US.
In the parlance of the study, a “job is considered disrupted when a significant amount of tasks within that role are consolidated, replaced or eliminated as a result of AI,” per Carras.
She writes, “In an industry already brought to its knees by the COVID-19 pandemic, overspending during the streaming wars, overlapping labor disputes and mass layoff-inducing corporate mergers, AI is just one more wrench to worry about for entertainment workers.”
“Among the top tasks flagged as likely to be impacted by AI: creating realistic sound design for film, TV or games; developing 3D assets; and creating realistic sounding foreign-language dubbing. The tasks least likely to be affected include writing film, TV or game scripts, as well as performing music or vocals,” Cho summarized.
Note that more than half of those expected to be affected reside in a handful of U.S. states: California, New York, Georgia and Washington (places known for their connections to film, television and gaming).
They also point out that gig workers and freelancers are likely to be hit hard by the incorporation of AI tools; they concede that “change may not be systematically understood or visible beyond anecdotal data” for these types of workers.
Still, it’s worth pointing out, since the report estimates that 29% of U.S. arts, design, entertainment and media workers are self-employed or operate in a similarly independent fashion, more than four times the national average for all major occupation sectors.
CVL tried to suss out the impact by comparing the firms that lean heavily on freelancers with their attitudes toward early Gen AI adoption, and there was an overlap for nearly 8 in 10 companies.
Also likely to be on the Gen AI chopping block are entry level positions, which will have downstream effects on the talent pool. The report frets that this in turn will limit networking opportunities and the acquisition of “domain knowledge,” which are cumulative.
“When you’re looking at any technology that’s essentially replacing [or consolidating] a junior or entry-level role … it is harming the ecosystem,” The Concept Art Assn.’s Hendrix told Carras. “What does that mean if nobody’s really entering in and the bar is now this immovable wall?”
And unless firms are especially careful, DEI initiatives are likely to suffer, CVL cautions.
“Aspiring workers from less affluent and underrepresented backgrounds have historically leveraged these entry-level roles as a pathway into the entertainment industries and to higher-paying positions,” Cho writes.
However, all of these outcomes are not inevitable (except, perhaps the integration of generative AI into nearly every workflow in the same way that the Internet has permeated our lives). Understanding trend lines is not synonymous with seeing an unchangeable future. Unions and regulatory bodies will have a say in how this plays out, in addition to corporations and creatives.
As Cho puts it: “The future is not yet written, and it needn’t be generated by AI.”
Amid fears over the use of generative AI in Hollywood, artificial intelligence seems less likely to replace humans than to assist them.
February 8, 2024
Posted
February 7, 2024
Reading Between the Lines: Gen Z Really Loves Closed Captions
TL;DR
More than half of Gen Z and millennial media consumers prefer subtitles, according to new survey results from YPulse and Preply.
While subtitles haven’t always been seen as a first choice, they’ve grown in ubiquity — especially with the rise of online videos that include automatic captioning.
Captions help watchers keep up with murmuring dialogue, distinguish thick accents and get a head start on a scene.
Closed captions aren’t just for the hearing impaired — the rise in its popularity is being driven by younger viewers who are in fact making the use of subtitles while watching television the norm.
In a new “TV and Entertainment report,” YPulse found that more than half of 13-39-year-olds prefer to use subtitles.
And it’s not just because they need them; the younger generation makes use of reading text while watching movies/TV to keep up with murmuring dialogue, to distinguish less familiar accents, and some say just to get a head start on a scene and go back to looking at their phone.
Per the report, 59% of Gen Z survey respondents and 52% of millennials said they use subtitles. 61% of Gen Z males say they prefer to use them.
These are no outliers. A 2023 report by Preply found Gen Z overwhelmingly the generation most likely to be turning on subtitles (70% of Gen Z respondents said so compared to 53% of Millennials, and just 35% of Baby Boomers).
As to why Gen Z likes to turn on text while watching their shows, part of it, according to Wilson Chapman at IndieWire, is that people in that generation grew up watching videos on social media, where subtitles are the algorithmically encouraged default.
Sara Fischer at Axios writes that TikTok helped normalize captions for young media consumers, who are now turning regularly to subtitles as part of their streaming habits.
“TikTok has an auto caption feature that a lot of content creators will use,” Axios reporter April Rubin told WGBH Morning Edition co-host Jeremy Siegel. “And so people are just a little bit more used to reading as they watch. Another factor that may play into this is that it has been a little tougher to maintain quality sound in the streaming era. So they could be watching subtitles just because they’re missing some of the dialogue with background noise or changing volumes.”
Younger kids actively need subtitles to enjoy the content they are watching, according to a Kids Industries survey of US and UK parents with kids 5-15 years old. In this case, subtitles add an increased dimension of understanding to viewing. Watching content with closed captions can reportedly improve literacy, vocabulary, and the speed of reading, the report said.
“For kids’ media brands, the widespread use of closed captions should be a sign to improve accuracy and make sure subtitles are available for all programs,” suggests YPulse.
But closed captions are being used more by all of us. A 2022 report by Netflix revealed that 40% of its global users use closed captions on all the time, while 80% switch them on at least once a month.
In its survey Preply determined that half of Americans used closed captions with the top reason (cited by 72% of respondents) being that subtitles make dialogue easier to understand.
As Chapman lays out in IndieWire, the causes behind muddled dialogue are many and might vary between person to person. For some, the problem is the design of modern televisions; the majority of which place internal speakers at the bottom of the set instead of facing towards the audience, causing significantly worse audio quality. Other issues are caused by sound designs optimized for theatrical experiences, which can result in compressed audio when translated to home.
“A lot of people struggle to hear dialogue now, so turning on closed captioning to decipher what people are saying has become a no brainer move,” he says.
An article in British broadsheet The Guardian also focuses on the issue of hard-to-hear dialogue which is a known issue in the industry, according to sound mixer Guntis Sics (Thor: Ragnarok), who is quoted in the piece.
Where once actors had to project loudly towards a fixed microphone on set. more portable mics has allowed a shift towards a more intimate and naturalistic style of performance, where actors can speak more softly — or, some might say, mumble.
“Antony Hopkins on Thor spoke like a normal human being, whereas on a lot of other films, there’s a new style with young actors — it’s like they just talk to themselves. That might work in a cinema, but not necessarily when it gets into people’s lounge rooms,” Sics says.
The Guardian’s Katie Cunningham also suggests sound mixes have become more complicated — fine for the 22.2 speakers of Dolby Atmos in a theater but indistinct when played back through a TV’s tiny and tinny speakers.
“When sound is mixed with the best possible audio experience in mind much of that detail can be lost when it’s folded down to laptop speakers, or even your television. It’s often the dialogue that suffers most.”
If you haven’t invested in an expensive speaker set up at home then reliance on the TV’s speaker output alone “could leave you with a subpar experience.”
Of course, the volume of foreign language shows and the phenomenal popularity of some of them — from Squid Game to Money Heist — demands subtitles, but even English-language shows seem too hard for many Americans to understand.
British comedies and dramas that aren’t the usual period dramas like The Crown are often acted with authentic local accents. Peaky Blinders (Birmingham), Derry Girls (Northern Irish) and even contestants on reality TV shows like Love Island are called out. As is Irish Oscar-winning drama The Banshees of Inisherin.
“If people get used to using subtitles where it’s basically required, it becomes a matter of habit to keep them in use even when watching American productions,” says Chapman.
In her article, she states the captioning services market in the US as valued at nearly $170 million in 2022. Studios however often outsource the work to companies like Rev, which in turn has 75,000 international freelancers on its books for transcription work.
Some studios issue very specific subtitle requirements. Netflix’s style guide includes rules like a limit of 42 characters per line, a set reading speed of up to 20 characters-per-second for adult shows (up to 17 for children’s programs) and an emphasis that “dialogue must never be censored.”
To prepare for live events like awards shows, captioners are given a script in advance of everything from the teleprompter — except for the names of the winners. When people ad-lib or give their acceptance speeches, the captioners are working from scratch.
“The person gets up and thanks someone with a very complicated name. We take a guess at it, but we’re going to spell it wrong. That’s bound to happen,” says Heather York, VP of marketing for captioning company Vitac.
Streamers often ask for subtitles in up to nine languages before their shows drop, creating a new challenge for service providers.
“We’ve got to pivot with our workflows, with our resources,” says Deluxe senior VP Magda Jagucka. “That process to bring non-English original content to global audiences requires multiple translation and adaptation steps.”
AI is already being used to give a first pass at transcription, with human editors then going through to make corrections — but there are current limitations.
“There’s a lot of nuance, and the audio-visual translation isn’t really just based on text,” says Jagucka. “When you’re thinking about AI, it goes through that textual base, but translators get our cues from the sound, from the visual, from the picture, from the tonality of the dialogue and the actors acting, as well.”
It is another instance where AI is a tool to assist rather than replace humans, at least at this stage.
Pat Krouse, VP of operations at Rev, tells THR, “AI is really helpful where it speeds up … moving from a pure typist to an editor and a proofreader, and eventually a summarizer. It makes humans focus on higher value things, as opposed to just pure typing work.”
A new survey finds 50% of US consumers use captions and subtitles while viewing content most of the time, making them an essential tool.
March 28, 2024
Posted
February 4, 2024
Navigating the Creator Economy: Social Commerce Is Everything
TL;DR
Transforming social media platforms from mere engagement spaces to dynamic marketplaces, social commerce stands out as one of the most significant trends for marketers to watch out for in 2024.
With digital video consumption at an all-time high, advertisers are increasingly investing in creator-led content, recognizing its power to drive consumer behavior and sales.
Influencers are pivotal in connecting brands with consumers, utilizing authentic content to drive both online engagement and in-store traffic.
Marketing strategy agency Aspire’s new report, “The State of Influencer Marketing 2024,” casts a spotlight on the formidable influence of social commerce.
Magda Houalla, Aspire’s director of marketing strategy, predicts that word-of-mouth marketing on social media will be the primary way that brands obtain new customers over the next few years.
Social commerce stands out as one of the most significant trends for marketers to watch out for in 2024. Social media platforms are evolving beyond their traditional roles as spaces for engagement and community building, morphing into dynamic marketplaces where discovery and purchase happen seamlessly.
Led by creator content, digital video consumption has reached an all-time high, and advertisers are taking notice. Currently valued at $250 billion, Goldman Sachs forecasts that the burgeoning creator economy is expected to grow to a whopping $480 billion by 2027. This year alone, according to a new report by IAB and TalkShoppe, 44% of marketers plan to increase their investment in creator-led content by an average of 25%. And as the creator economy continues to expand, agencies and other experts are chiming in with winning strategies for brands to harness the power of influencer marketing.
The rise of social commerce is a fundamental evolution in how consumers interact with brands online. It underscores the growing importance of authentic, influencer-driven content in guiding consumer decisions, making social commerce a critical area of focus for brands aiming to capitalize on the creator economy’s explosive growth.
The Impact of Social Commerce
The trajectory of social commerce in the United States is on a remarkable ascent, with revenue projected to leap from $67 billion in 2023 to over $144 billion by 2027, according to Insider Intelligence. This significant growth underscores the shifting dynamics of consumer shopping behaviors, increasingly influenced by the digital landscape and the persuasive power of social media platforms.
Central to this transformation is the role of creator-led content, which has proven especially impactful among Gen Z consumers. Data from Morning Consult reveals a compelling trend: 53% of Gen Z shoppers report making a purchase after watching a product review video on social media. Furthermore, the influence of specific content formats like “product hauls” and “Get Ready with Me” videos is undeniable, driving 40% and 37% of these consumers, respectively, to make purchases.
The rise of social commerce represents a paradigm shift in the retail ecosystem, blurring the lines between social networking and e-commerce. As consumers increasingly look to trusted influencers for product recommendations and insights, the impact of social media on purchasing decisions becomes more pronounced. This trend not only reflects the growing importance of social commerce in the broader creator economy but also emphasizes the need for brands to leverage these platforms and partnerships strategically to engage with and captivate the next generation of consumers.
Strategic Insights on Social Commerce
Aspire’s sixth annual report, “The State of Influencer Marketing 2024,” recently unveiled by the marketing strategy agency, casts a spotlight on the formidable influence of social commerce.
Instagram continues to reign as the most popular channel for influencer marketing among brands, the report found, followed by TikTok. “This year, we saw a record number of brands run TikTok campaigns on Aspire, with a 26% increase in the number of TikTok campaigns year-over-year. This will continue to be the trend in 2024, with brands saying they’ll invest more into Instagram and TikTok this coming year.”
Magda Houalla, Aspire’s director of marketing strategy, encapsulates this trend, predicting, “Word of mouth marketing on social media will be the primary way that brands obtain new customers over the next few years.”
“We’ve seen a lot of creators talk about Stanley, and I think that they do an exceptionally good job at is fostering community and kind of creating this urgency to buy product,” she notes. Of particular interest, she says, is how influencers on TikTok and elsewhere were actually driving in-store traffic as Stanley cups were quickly stripped from store shelves.
Houalla also identifies what she calls the “Queen Bee strategy.”
“This is where you have one macro creator post a hero piece of content … and then a bunch of micro creators that are redirecting towards that hero piece of content, kind of like a beehive,” she explains. In addition to Stanley, other brands using this social commerce strategy include makeup brand Ilya, and Samsung, which uses influencers to peddle high-end smart TVs.
“What I really like about Samsung is the quiet elegance, if you will, of the influencer programs that they’re doing, or the influencer work they’re doing specifically with brands in the home decor space,” she adds. “It is really subtle the way they talk about these brands because it is part of a broader ‘look at my living room makeover’ type content versus a shop.”
Influencers Play a Crucial Role in Social Commerce
Beyond driving sales, influencers play a crucial role in fostering community around brands. They create spaces where followers can discuss, share, and engage with products, turning individual purchasing decisions into collective experiences. This sense of community not only strengthens brand loyalty but also amplifies the impact of marketing campaigns. The relationship between influencers and their audiences is built on trust and relatability, making their endorsements more effective than traditional advertising.
Social commerce is increasingly not just an add-on feature but a central component of many brands’ digital strategies, notes Jessica Deyo at Marketing Dive. “Starting first with creators when it comes to advertising is definitely the wave of the future,” Ali Fazal, VP of marketing for creator management platform Grin, tells Deyo.
Influencers are playing a pivotal role in this shift, acting as the bridge between brands and consumers in the social media space. Their ability to showcase products in a relatable, engaging manner is transforming the shopping experience from a transactional process into an interactive and social event.
“If you look at the heart of influence, you’d be foolish to ignore the underlying component of what makes influencer marketing so successful; a uniquely informed and authentic perspective that audiences can trust within a like-minded community,” powerhouse agency Ogilvy counsels in its latest report, “2024 Influence Trends You Should Know About.”
Livestreaming is one surefire strategy for creators to build authenticity and trust, Ogilvy advises. “Through livestreams, creators can demonstrate products authentically, dispelling fears of staged and deceptive marketing,” the report reads. “Consumers believe the authenticity, as they can probe their creators to use the product and answer questions right in front of their eyes. It’s the shopping center juicing demos of the 90s but behind the protective barrier of your phone screen.”
As we navigate the ever-evolving landscape of social commerce, it’s clear that this trend represents more than just a shift in consumer behavior — it’s a fundamental change in the way brands interact with their audiences. The rise of live-streaming and the strategic emphasis on creators for advertising underscore a new era in digital marketing, one where engagement, authenticity, and community take center stage.
The integration of social commerce into digital strategies marks a significant pivot for brands. It’s a move towards more genuine, influencer-driven marketing approaches that resonate deeply with today’s consumers. This shift not only enhances the consumer experience but also opens up new avenues for brands to forge meaningful connections and drive tangible results. As social commerce continues to grow and shape the digital marketplace, its impact on both online engagement and in-store traffic reaffirms the power of influencer-led content in the modern marketing mix.
The cultural impact a creator has is already surpassing that of traditional media, but there’s still a stark imbalance of power between proprietary platforms and the creators who use them. Discover what it takes to stay ahead of the game with these fresh insights hand-picked from the NAB Amplify archives:
The Creator Economy is reshaping digital advertising, offering brands authentic engagement and accelerating the consumer purchase journey.
January 28, 2024
Posted
January 28, 2024
Deepfakes, Disinformation, Data Leaks: Being Online Is… Not Great
TL;DR
The World Economic Forum highlights the dangers of algorithmic-driven social media feeds and deepfakes in its 2024 Global Risks Report, citing misinformation as the main issue impacting global politics and security over the next two years.
With elections coming in the US, India, Mexico, Indonesia, the UK, and the EU in 2024, monitoring online activity for dis- and misinformation is essential — but unlikely to work.
False information and societal polarization are linked, the WEF reports, with potential to amplify each other. There are moves to counter, regulate and monitor social media networks in the works, but these could be “too little, too late.”
In 2024, we will face a grim digital dark age, as social media platforms transition away from the logic of Web 2.0 and toward one dictated by AI-generated content, says Gina Neff, executive director of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge. Writing for Wired, she says online trust will reach an all-time low thanks to unchecked disinformation, AI-generated content, and social platforms pulling up their data drawbridges.
Her view is echoed in a new report by the World Economic Forum, which highlights risk of AI-generated mis- and disinformation in exacerbating a cost-of-living crisis and socio-political polarization.
The WEF’s 2024 Global Risks Report is based on the views of 1,500 global risks experts, policy-makers, and industry leaders. It finds that the world’s top three risks over the next two years are false information, extreme weather, and societal polarization. Read the report here.
The threat posed by mis- and disinformation takes the top spot in part because of just how much open access to increasingly sophisticated technologies may proliferate, disrupting trust in information and institutions.
“The boom in synthetic content that we’ve seen in 2023 will continue, and a wide set of actors will likely capitalize on this trend, with the potential to amplify societal divisions, incite ideological violence, and enable political repression,” said Saadia Zahidi, MD and head of the Centre for the New Society and Economy at the WEF.
What’s more, false information and societal polarization are linked, with potential to amplify each other. Zahidi said, “Polarized societies may become polarized not only in their political affiliations, but also in their perceptions of reality. That can have a profound impact on many crucial issues ranging from public health to social justice and education to the environment.”
These trends are occurring at a time of heightened economic hardship for many people around the globe. Together, this “potent mix” of economic distress, false information, and societal divisions can create challenges for many societies, “providing fertile ground for continued strife, uncertainty, and erratic decision-making,” the WEF warns.
This has broad repercussions for the long-term outlook. A decade from now, according to the WEF’s Global Risks Report, the top three risks are all related to the climate emergency: extreme weather, change to Earth systems, and biodiversity loss. Mis- and disinformation stays high on the agenda at number five, followed by other adverse outcomes of AI technologies at number six, and involuntary migration at number seven, while societal polarization also stays in the top 10.
In response to the uncertainties surrounding generative AI and the need for robust AI governance frameworks, the Forum has launched the AI Governance Alliance.
The aim of the Alliance is to unite industry leaders, governments, academic institutions, and civil society organizations to champion responsible global design and release of transparent and inclusive AI systems.
Benjamin Larsen, the WEF’s Lead on AI and ML, says, “Sustained dialogue lays the groundwork for greater cooperation and a potential reversal of digital fragmentation.”
Neff laments the shut down in access to user data on social media sites like Twitter or Facebook. “Companies have rushed to incorporate large language models into online services, complete with hallucinations (inaccurate, unjustified responses) and mistakes, which have further fractured our trust in online information,” she says.
To clean up online platforms and prevent the excesses of polarization she calls for the adoption of the STAR Framework (Safety by Design, Transparency, Accountability, and Responsibility) that she says would ensure that digital products and services are safe before they are launched; increase transparency around algorithms, rule enforcement, and advertising; and work to hold companies both accountable to democratic and independent bodies, and responsible for omissions and actions that lead to harm.
The EU’s Digital Services Act is another step in the right direction of regulation, but its capacity to ensure that independent researchers can monitor social network platforms will take years to be actionable. The UK’s Online Safety Bill — slowly making its way through the policy process — could also help, but again, these provisions will take time to implement.
Until then, Neff says, “the transition from social media to AI-mediated information means that, in 2024, a new digital dark age will likely begin.
Redefine the Future of AI Content Delivery: Join Us February 29 for the (Second) NABiQ Live Challenge!
TL;DR
New for this year, “NABiQ Deep Dive,” is a series of virtual challenges and live workshops leading up to the dynamic in-person innovation sprint and creative networking event in Las Vegas.
Facilitated by innovation consultant, certified design sprint master and startup coach Maria Halse Duloquin, this 60-minute online knowledge exchange will explore strategies for harnessing the power of AI to provide real-time personalization, customizable content, and improved content discovery.
Gain clarity on concrete challenges and opportunities for content delivery and workflows. Help map out challenges and opportunities for AI by sharing your insights and experience, while meeting — and learning from — other industry professionals.
This 60-minute online knowledge exchange will be facilitated by innovation consultant, certified design sprint master and startup coach Maria Halse Duloquin. The Deep Dive session will delve into topics ranging from real-time personalization and customizable content to providing consumers more accurate recommendations. The session will also include an exploration of what we do and don’t understand so far about AI content delivery, as well as how to embrace the future of content delivery. Insights from this Deep Dive will inform the on-site NABiQ brainstorm sessions at NAB Show, running April 13-17 in Las Vegas.
NABiQ stands out as an unparalleled education and networking opportunity to collaborate, share ideas and overcome industry challenges. Structured like a hackathon, in-person participants form small groups, tackling specific challenges and presenting their innovative solutions for challenges around the three show pillars, Create, Connect and Capitalize.
This year, the dynamic innovation sprint and creative networking event is breaking new ground by introducing live challenges on NAB Amplify leading up to the main event. The digital, three-part series of Deep Dives topics revolve around the future of AI including content creation, content delivery and audience engagement and interaction.
Perfect safety is no more possible online than it is when driving on a crowded road with strangers or walking alone through a city at night. Like roads and cities, the internet’s dangers arise from choices society has made. To enjoy the freedom of cars comes with the risk of accidents; to have the pleasures of a city full of unexpected encounters means some of those encounters can harm you. To have an open internet means people can always find ways to hurt each other.
But some highways and cities are safer than others. Together, people can make their online lives safer, too.
I’m a media scholar who researches the online world. For decades now, I have experimented on myself and my devices to explore what it might take to live a digital life on my own terms. But in the process, I’ve learned that my privacy cannot come from just my choices and my devices.
This is a guide for getting started, with the people around you, on the way toward a safer and healthier online life.
The Threats
The dangers you face online take very different forms, and they require different kinds of responses. The kind of threat you hear about most in the news is the straightforwardly criminal sort of hackers and scammers. The perpetrators typically want to steal victims’ identities or money, or both. These attacks take advantage of varying legal and cultural norms around the world. Businesses and governments often offer to defend people from these kinds of threats, without mentioning that they can pose threats of their own.
A second kind of threat comes from businesses that lurk in the cracks of the online economy. Lax protections allow them to scoop up vast quantities of data about people and sell it to abusive advertisers, police forces and others willing to pay. Private data brokers most people have never heard of gather data from apps, transactions and more, and they sell what they learn about you without needing your approval.
A third kind of threat comes from established institutions themselves, such as the large tech companies and government agencies. These institutions promise a kind of safety if people trust them – protection from everyone but themselves, as they liberally collect your data. Google, for instance, provides tools with high security standards, but its business model is built on selling ads based on what people do with those tools. Many people feel they have to accept this deal, because everyone around them already has.
The stakes are high. Feminist and critical race scholars have demonstrated that surveillance has long been the basis of unjust discrimination and exclusion. As African American studies scholar Ruha Benjamin puts it, online surveillance has become a “new Jim Code,” excluding people from jobs, fair pricing and other opportunities based on how computers are trained to watch and categorize them.
Once again, there is no formula for safety. When you make choices about your technology, individually or collectively, you are really making choices about whom and how you trust — shifting your trust from one place to another. But those choices can make a real difference.
Phase 1: Basic Data Privacy Hygiene
To get started with digital privacy, there are a few things you can do fairly easily on your own. First, use a password manager like Bitwarden or Proton Pass, and make all your passwords unique and complex. If you can remember a password easily, it’s probably not keeping you safe. Also, enable two-factor authentication, which typically involves receiving a code in a text message, wherever you can.
As you browse the web, use a browser like Firefox or Brave with a strong commitment to privacy, and add to that a good ad blocker like uBlock Origin. Get in the habit of using a search engine like DuckDuckGo or Brave Search that doesn’t profile you based on your past queries.
On your phone, download only the apps you need. It can help to wipe and reset everything periodically to make sure you keep only what you really use. Beware especially of apps that track your location and access your files. For Android users, F-Droid is an alternative app store with more privacy-preserving tools. The Consumer Reports app Permission Slip can help you manage how other apps use your data.
Phase 2: Shifting Away
Next, you can start shifting your trust away from companies that make their money from surveillance. But this works best if you can get your community involved; if they are using Gmail, and you email them, Google gets your email whether you use Gmail yourself or not. Try an email provider like Proton Mail that doesn’t rely on targeted ads, and see if your friends will try it, too. For mobile chat, Signal makes encrypted messages easy, but only if others are using it with you.
You can also try using privacy-preserving operating systems for your devices. GrapheneOS and /e/OS are versions of Android that avoid sending your phone’s data to Google. For your computer, Pop!_OS is a friendly version of Linux. Find more ideas for shifting away at science and technology scholar Janet Vertesi’s Opt-Out Project website.
Phase 3: New Foundations
If you are ready to go even further, rethink how your community or workplace collaborates. In my university lab, we run our own servers to manage our tools, including Nextcloud for file sharing and Matrix for chat.
This kind of shift, however, requires a collective commitment in how organizations spend money on technology, away from big companies and toward investing in the ability to manage your tools. It can take extra work to build what I call “governable stacks” — tools that people manage and control together — but the result can be a more satisfying, empowering relationship with technology.
Protecting Each Other
Too often, people are told that being safe online is a job for individuals, and it is your fault if you’re not doing it right. But I think this is a kind of victim blaming. In my view, the biggest source of danger online is the lack of public policy and collective power to prevent surveillance from being the basic business model for the internet.
For years, people have organized “cryptoparties” where they can come together and learn how to use privacy tools. You can also support organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation that advocate for privacy-protecting public policy. If people assume that privacy is just an individual responsibility, we have already lost.
The WEF highlights AI-generated mis- and disinformation as the main issue impacting global politics and security over the next two years.
January 23, 2024
Generative AI for Content Creation: The (First) NABiQ Live Challenge
TL;DR
NAB Show introduces “NABiQ Deep Dive,” a series of virtual challenges and live workshops leading up to the dynamic in-person innovation sprint and creative networking event in Las Vegas.
Facilitated by innovation consultant, certified design sprint master and startup coach Maria Duloquin, the January 25th Deep Dive features a panel of industry experts and NAB Amplify senior editor Emily M. Reigart.
The free workshop will be followed by two more Deep Dives on February 29 and March 28, addressing AI in content delivery and audience engagement.
Join NAB Amplify for NABiQ Deep Dive with a series of virtual challenges as we gear up for NAB Show 2024, running April 13-17 in Las Vegas.
NABiQ stands out as an unparalleled education and networking opportunity to collaborate, share ideas and overcome industry challenges. Structured like a hackathon, in-person participants form small groups, tackling specific challenges and presenting their innovative solutions for challenges around the three show pillars, Create, Connect and Capitalize.
This year, the dynamic innovation sprint and creative networking event is breaking new ground by introducing live challenges on NAB Amplify leading up to the main event. The digital, three-part series of Deep Dives topics revolve around the future of AI including content creation, content delivery and audience engagement and interaction.
Deep Dive: Unlock Gen AI in Content Creation
Targeting the Create community, the first — free — workshop was held January 25 at 1:00 p.m. EST. Innovation consultant, certified design sprint master and startup coach Maria Duloquin facilitated the event, joined NAB Amplify senior editor Emily M. Reigart for a discussion on unlocking the potential of generative AI.
Participants identified their locus in the M&E universe, with significant representation for the education sector and studios/production work.
Attendees discussed what is understood so far about AI in M&E, along with what we don’t know, as well as how to embrace the future of AI in the industry. Participants raised concerns about AI ethics, legality and regulation, and how to educate ourselves and others about generative AI.
Providing a space for participants to share their insights and experience, and the opportunity to meet and learn from other industry professionals, this workshop helped to map out challenges and opportunities for AI.
Next at Bat
The workshop will be followed by two more Deep Dives on February 29 and March 28, addressing AI in content delivery and audience engagement.
NAB Show itself will feature four daily NABiQ brainstorming sessions, each followed by a happy hour pitch showcase for further networking opportunities. Insights from the Deep Dive sessions will inform the on-site NABiQ brainstorm sessions at NAB Show in Las Vegas.
Navigating the Creator Economy: There Are Many (Many) Business Models
TL;DR
New research shows that advertising alongside creator content speeds up the consumer purchase journey, collapsing traditional stages like awareness, interest, and consideration.
According to a report from digital advertising trade group IAB, 92% of advertisers view creator-led content as a high-quality channel, with many planning to increase investment in this area.
Jack Koch, SVP of Research & Insights at IAB, emphasizes the unique appeal and integration of ads in creator content compared to studio-produced content, affecting consumer behavior and advertising effectiveness.
Koch outlines strategies for blending creator content into traditional advertising, focusing on leveraging creator-driven platforms, clear tracking mechanisms, and brand safety controls.
A balanced mix of studio and creator content is essential for engaging diverse viewers, he says, with emphasis on data analysis, audience understanding, and quality content alignment.
The ever-evolving advertising landscape finds a fresh ally in the creator economy, offering brands a direct line to more genuine, engaging connections with their audience. Digital advertising trade group IAB has released its first-ever research report on advertising opportunities within the creator economy. The report, titled “The Creator Economy Opportunity: Where Authenticity Meets Impact,” was conducted in partnership with market research agency Talk Shoppe, and offers a deep examination of the evolving consumer purchase journey, how buyers can leverage the creator economy in their media budgets, and where creator content fits in the media mix alongside studio-produced content.
“The creator economy, valued at $250 billion this year by Goldman Sachs, is expected to nearly double to $480 billion by 2027. Savvy marketers know that they need to reach their customers in content that resonates with them,” IAB CEO David Cohen said in a statement. “There is no doubt creator content is now a vital part of the mix.”
After tracking more than 1,000 consumer purchase journeys, the report found that advertising alongside creator content can accelerate the purchase funnel — collapsing the awareness, interest, and consideration stages. IAB also reported that creator content sparks more action when compared to studio-produced content: after watching, consumers were significantly more likely to search for additional content about the topic and interact with the content by liking, commenting, or subscribing.
Advertisers themselves are feeling bullish about creator-led content, which 92% of respondents said they consider to be a high quality channel. Around 44% of advertisers plan to increase their investment in creator content in 2024, the report found, with an average increase of 25%. Perhaps most important, advertisers don’t have to reinvent the wheel to measure the success of their campaigns. Nearly 90% of advertisers use the same KPI metrics across both creator content and studio content, and 86% of advertisers have confidence in the ability to measure the effectiveness of creator content campaigns.
Influencers Gotta Influence
Jack Koch, SVP of Research & Insights at IAB, elaborated to NAB Amplify on how creator content influences each stage of the consumer purchase journey.
“Creator content marketing significantly influences the consumer’s purchase journey, from discovering new brands and products to speeding up buying decisions and driving post-purchase loyalty and advocacy,” Koch said. “Creator content is exceptionally powerful in the research/consideration and loyalty/advocacy stages and works in tandem with studio content to maximize influence on the consumer’s path to purchase.”
The perceived authenticity of creator-led content, he added, “allows consumers to visualize products in their daily lives, enabling multiple stages to happen simultaneously. This compresses the purchase funnel and fosters a more confident and rapid buyer decision-making process.”
Creator Content Is Premium Content
The evolving world of digital advertising isn’t just about where ads are placed; it’s equally about how they are perceived. Koch offers insights into how consumer perceptions vary markedly between creator and studio-produced content.
“Consumer perceptions of advertising in creator versus studio content showcase distinct viewpoints,” he explains. This difference is fundamental to understanding the shift in advertising dynamics. Creator content, as per Koch’s analysis, is perceived as “a more engaging and relevant space for ads, offering unexpected inspiration and precise audience targeting.” This is in contrast to studio content, which, while celebrated for its high production value and broad reach, occupies a different niche in the advertising ecosystem.
The distinction becomes more pronounced when considering how ads are integrated into the content. “Consumers perceive ads within creator content as more seamlessly integrated into their viewing experience,” Koch notes.
In contrast, studio content, with its traditional approach, brings a different kind of advantage. “Ads in studio content are deemed slightly more memorable due to familiarity with advertising in that space,” he says. This familiarity stems from years of exposure to traditional advertising formats, making studio content ads more recognizable and, in some cases, more memorable to consumers.
In essence, the authenticity of creator content and the established familiarity of studio content offer two sides of the same coin. Advertisers, by understanding and respecting these differences, can develop more nuanced and effective advertising campaigns that speak directly to the evolving preferences of their audience.
Challenges and Strategies for Embracing Creator-Driven Content
Incorporating creator content into traditional advertising strategies is not without its challenges. Koch sheds light on the complexities and the potential strategies to navigate these waters effectively.
The primary hurdles in merging creator content with traditional advertising stem from three areas: “uncertainty, unpredictability, and initial navigation hurdles,” Koch says.
“Advertisers who might choose not to spend with creators struggle with the uncertainty of ad placement within creator content, hindering alignment with brand values and control over ad environments,” he points out.
This uncertainty can lead to concerns about whether the content aligns with the brand’s values and whether it can be controlled effectively within the advertising environment. “Further, the less predictable performance of creator content complicates ROI tracking and campaign evaluation. Navigating the expansive creator space overwhelms advertisers due to its diverse options.”
To address these challenges, Koch recommends a strategic approach centered on leveraging creator-driven platforms. These platforms offer more control over ad placement and provide advanced analytics tools for real-time performance tracking. Such tools can mitigate the unpredictability factor by offering clearer insights into campaign effectiveness.
Koch also emphasizes the importance of clear tracking mechanisms, like unique discount codes, especially when partnering directly with creators. These mechanisms enable advertisers to assess the performance of their campaigns more accurately and make data-driven decisions.
Furthermore, embracing brand safety controls is crucial. Koch suggests utilizing technological advancements such as AI content monitoring and participating in industry initiatives aimed at creating safer digital environments. By integrating these creator-driven platforms and strategies, he says, advertisers can harmonize traditional and digital media to effectively achieve their campaign objectives.
The Winds of Change
Valued at $250 billion and projected to reach $480 billion by 2027, the Creator Economy is driving a major shift in digital video viewership.
“While traditional studio content remains vital, creator content has become indispensable in advertising strategies, as 39% of consumers are watching more creator content than they were a year ago, compared to 22% watching more studio content across devices and services,” Koch says. “In fact, according to our study, 89% of advertisers feel positive about creator content advertising, and 92% consider it a high-quality channel.”
Embracing creator-driven content isn’t just a trend; it’s an essential strategy in a landscape where authenticity and multipoint audience engagement reign supreme. “By building trust with partners and creators, aligning budgets with areas of highest consumer impact, and focusing on aligning with quality content, marketers are finding long-term success integrating creator-driven advertising into their holistic media strategies.”
Maintaining Brand Integrity
To effectively integrate creator content while upholding brand integrity and meeting marketing goals, brands should carefully select creators whose content aligns with their values and resonates with the target audience, Koch says. Further, “encouraging an authentic integration of the brand within creator content is vital to maintaining authenticity and trust.”
Adaptability and flexibility are key, he says, allowing brands to refine strategies based on performance feedback. “Diverse partnerships with a range of creators help widen brand appeal across different consumer segments,” he advises.
“Robust measurement tools and unique tracking methods ensure accurate assessment of creator content impact, and leveraging creator-driven platforms for better ad control and embracing brand safety tools are crucial for maintaining brand integrity.”
Finally, Koch advises, brands need to build meaningful relationships with creators. “Fostering long-term relationships with creators and using insights from their content for continuous optimization enables brands to create a cohesive presence across traditional and digital media.”
Winning Strategies for the Ideal Media Mix
“A balanced media mix is crucial,” Koch exhorts. “Studio content can spark conversations and immerse viewers, while creator content captivates with its personally relevant nature that inspires and engages. Both content types meet the diverse needs of viewers, establishing that ‘quality’ content is subjective.”
Advertisers, he says, “should analyze data from both types of content to understand their audience demographics, engagement levels, and performance metrics. Testing and iterating the mix while aligning it with campaign objectives will yield the ideal balance for maximum impact.”
The formula, he says, is simple: “By building trust with partners and creators, aligning budgets with areas of highest consumer impact, and focusing on aligning with quality content, marketers are finding long-term success integrating creator-driven advertising into their holistic media strategies.”
Driven by creator-led content, social commerce stands out as one of the most significant trends for marketers to watch out for in 2024.
January 7, 2024
Can Content Credentials Can Defeat Deepfakes (in Elections and Beyond)?
TL;DR
In 2024, deployment of content credentials will begin in earnest, spurred by new AI regulations in the EU and the United States.
For the media companies, content credentials are a way to build trust at a time when rampant disinformation makes it easy for people to cry “fake” about anything they disagree with.
The BBC and other big media organizations are making a push to use a content credentials system to allow Internet users to check the validity and provenance of images and videos.
In 2024, major national elections in some of the world’s biggest democracies, including India, the US and the UK, could be shaped by the alarmingly real threat of online disinformation.
To counter the threat of deepfake content, media companies are making moves to embed news-related video and still images with tags that display their provenance.
So-called data integrity, data dignity or digital provenance has been proposed for a while as the most effective means of combatting AI-manipulated disinformation published online.
Now, major news organizations, tech companies and social media networks appear on track to make concrete steps that would give audiences transparency about the video and stills they are viewing.
“Having your content be a beacon shining through the murk is really important,” Laura Ellis, head of technology forecasting at the BBC, told IEEE Spectrum, which has a thorough report on the latest developments.
The BBC is a member of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), an organization developing technical methods to document the origin and history of digital media files, both real and fake.
The C2PA group brings together the Adobe-led Content Authenticity Initiative and a media provenance effort called Project Origin, which released its initial standards for attaching cryptographically secure metadata to image and video files in 2021.
Since releasing the standards, the group has been further developing the open-source specifications and implementing them with leading media companies — the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC), and The New York Times are also C2PA members. Andrew Jenks, director of media provenance projects at Microsoft, is C2PA chair.
As detailed by the IEEE, images that have been authenticated by the C2PA system can include a little “cr” icon in the corner; users can click on it to see whatever information is available for that image — when and how the image was created, who first published it, what tools they used to alter it, how it was altered, and so on. However, viewers will see that information only if they’re using a social media platform or application that can read and display content-credential data.
The same system can be used by AI companies that make image- and video-generating tools; in that case, the synthetic media that’s been created would be labeled as such.
Adobe, for example, generates the relevant metadata for every image that’s created with its image-generating tool Firefly. Microsoft does the same with its Bing Image Creator.
While only a few companies are integrating content credentials so far, regulations are currently being crafted that will encourage the practice. The European Union’s AI Act, now being finalized, requires that synthetic content be labeled. And the Biden administration recently issued an executive order on AI that requires the Commerce Department to develop guidelines for both content authentication and labeling of synthetic content.
Bruce MacCormack, chair of Project Origin and a member of the C2PA steering committee, told IEEE that the big AI companies started down the path toward content credentials in mid-2023, when they signed voluntary commitments with the White House that included a pledge to watermark synthetic content. “They all agreed to do something,” he notes. “They didn’t agree to do the same thing. The executive order is the driving function to force everybody into the same space.”
Later this year, the CBC aims to debut a content-credentialing system that will be visible to any external viewer using a type of software that recognizes the metadata.
Tessa Sproule, the CBC’s director of metadata and information systems, explains: “It’s secure information that can grow through the content life cycle of a still image,” she says. “You stamp it at the input, and then as we manipulate the image through cropping in Photoshop, that information is also tracked.”
The BBC has also been running workshops with media organizations to talk about integrating content-credentialing systems. Recognizing that it may be hard for small publishers to adapt their workflows, Ellis’s group is also exploring the idea of “service centers” to which publishers could send their images for validation and certification; the images would be returned with cryptographically hashed metadata attesting to their authenticity.
But none of these efforts will have much impact if social media platforms don’t enact something similar. After all, as the IEEE notes, viewers are more likely to trust an image — validated or not — on the BBC than they are on Facebook.
Meta is reportedly very engaged on this issue down to the practicalities of the additional compute requirements needed for content watermarking.
“If you add a watermark to every piece of content on Facebook, will that make it have a lag that makes users sign off?” says Claire Leibowicz, head of AI and media integrity for the Partnership on AI.
However, she expects regulations to be the biggest catalyst for content-credential adoption.
If social media platforms are the end of the image-distribution pipeline, the cameras that record images and videos are the beginning. In October, Leica unveiled the first camera with built-in content credentials; C2PA member companies Nikon and Canon have also made prototype cameras that incorporate credentialing.
But hardware integration should be considered “a growth step,” says Microsoft’s Jenks. “In the best case, you start at the lens when you capture something, and you have this digital chain of trust that extends all the way to where something is consumed on a Web page,” he says. “But there’s still value in just doing that last mile.”
Synthetic images and videos, are “going to have an impact” in the 2024 US presidential election, warned Jenks. “Our goal is to mitigate that impact as much as possible.”
Two misinformation experts explain why you’re not that good at detecting fake videos and how you can develop the power to resist them.
January 8, 2024
Posted
January 7, 2024
Yep, Every Business Is Now a Content Business
TL;DR
Creator collaborations are more than just a trend; they are a key component of any successful modern marketing strategy, says Cristy Garcia, chief marketing officer at impact.com.
When every brand is also now a content business, brands can’t just rely on providing a good product or service, she says. They also need to genuinely engage their audience, which means working with the right creator in the right way.
Branding expert David Harris stresses the importance of authenticity when choosing a creative partner, urging brands to strike a balance between brand objectives and a creator’s unique vision.
It should come as no surprise to digital marketers that content creators are a necessary partner to reach key audiences, nor that authenticity and trust are the foundations on which successful partnerships are built.
Nonetheless, the point is worth emphasizing given the importance to both sides — brands and creators — of building the creator economy.
According to data from impact.com, some brands are now reaping over 28% of their total company revenue through partnerships, while those committed to what the company calls the “partnership economy” over the long term are achieving year-on-year revenue channel growth exceeding 50%.
With the rise of influencers, content creators, and the overall creator economy, it seems everyone (journalists, major brands, social platforms, marketers) has since recognized the power of creators in directly and authentically reaching and engaging larger audiences than any static ad ever could, Cristy Garcia, chief marketing officer at impact.com, says.
Creating the Partnership Economy
Crucially for marketers, the creator economy is remarkably effective in driving campaign performance. Nearly a third of all social media users discover new products through influencers, and Goldman Sachs suggests that, by 2027, the creator economy will nearly double in size from $250 billion to a potential $480 billion globally — “a statistic marketers cannot afford to ignore,” emphasizes Garcia.
She adds, “it is evident that the creator economy, with its adept utilization of videos, still has untapped potential.”
Leveraging Your Influence(r)
Creators may be experts in the respective domains and are “an exceptionally trusted resource” for consumers, but that doesn’t mean that they will all make perfect matches for brands.
“Just because an influencer may be good at promoting businesses doesn’t mean they’re a fit for yours,” says Garcia. “You’ll want to find partners with aligned audiences and ones who match your brand’s values.
Rather than squandering resources on “broad, spray-and-pray marketing campaigns,” she adds, brands are natively introduced to a new or shared audience authentically.
“For the best ROI, we recommend paying your creator partners not just a flat fee or performance-based payouts but combining both of them to ensure your creator is happy with the arrangement and so is your budget.”
In the past, brands would simply pick the top celebrity and ask them to push their product. Nowadays, consumers are much more savvy, and this simply won’t fly.
“Consumers are becoming increasingly aware of marketing tactics,” branding expert David Harris notes. “We cannot stress the importance of authenticity when choosing a creative partner.”
Harris has some advice to brands wanting to work with creators. In essence, collaboration is key.
“If your brand chooses to work with creators, you need to strike a balance between your brand’s objectives and the creator’s unique vision,” he urges. “The spirit of collaboration needs to be at the heart of everything you do together.”
Evan Shapiro: What New Gaming Research Reveals (You Actually Would Be Surprised)
TL;DR
Gaming is a $200+ billion annual business. Yet, despite the pervasive presence of digital gaming in our lives, there are many misperceptions and misunderstandings about the global gaming market especially in the media.
A new report analyzed by Evan Shapiro highlights some nuances that the rest of M&E should note: Older demos are playing a lot more than you might think, and females make up a sizeable target audience.
While free mobile games are the most popular and make for an attractive advertising target, in-game purchases are huge revenue generators and the popularity of subscription streaming is on the rise among younger players.
In media and entertainment, gaming usurped film as king a number of years ago — and its growth continues to astound. Even as Hollywood acknowledges the deep-seated popularity of titles like “The Last of Us” and “Super Mario Bros.” by increasing the number of game to screen conversions knowledge of gamer demos and habits are not as well known and stereotype attitudes remain.
“Notably, the gaming community may look different than how you perceive it — older, more female, and far less console-based than how conventional wisdom usually paints modern gamers,” says media analyst Evan Shapiro, who wrote up a survey into the U.S industry compiled by Publishers Clearing House.
“Despite the pervasive presence of digital gaming in our lives, there are many misperceptions and misunderstandings about the global gaming market — even and perhaps especially in the media,” Shapiro judges.
Gaming by the Numbers
Let’s start with some broad figures.
PCH values the global market at $200 billion which is a pretty accurate figure if we compare it to a couple of others. Analysts at gaming research specialists Newzoo have the global games market generating revenues of $187.7 billion in 2023 rising to $212.4 billion in 2026. Another report published mid-2023 by PwC expects total gaming revenue to rise from US$227 billion this year to north of US$312 billion in 2027, representing a 7.9% CAGR.
By contrast, receipts from movies worldwide totalled less than $100 billion in 2022 and is estimated to grow to $169.62 billion by 2030, according to Zion Market Research. Very approximately, the gaming industry is a third bigger than movies by revenue.
There are 3.6 billion gamers in the world according to PCH and 3.4 billion according to Newzoo. Both analysts concur that the majority of gaming takes place on the world’s most ubiquitous screen, the mobile phone.
While games like Madden, FIFA, Call of Duty and Fortnite get a lot of buzz, puzzle games such as Wordle, Candy Crush, and Fishdom, dominate game-play for U.S. adults, notes Shapiro. In July 2023, mobile puzzle game Royal Match had 16 million downloads.
“Mobile’s dominance with adult gamers explains why most gaming revenue comes from mobile,” he says.
In terms of sheer numbers, mobile gaming will continue to dominate the gaming landscape in terms of consumer numbers and spending. Per Newzoo, mobile accounts for nearly half of the global market.
Yet the analyst points out that growth has been hampered this year as developers and marketers had to revise their strategies amid privacy-related challenges. Nevertheless, in the coming years, it believes that mobile developers will adapt to the new regulatory landscape and that mobile will enjoy its first hundred billion-dollar year in 2026.
The PCH survey polled 68,000 American gamers over 25 about their gaming habits, devices, formats, genres, and spending. Where it scores is in breaking down the age and demos of those playing.
It found that, contrary to popular perception, digital games are played regularly by all ages 55 and below. Certainly three-quarters of the 25-34 demo are gamers, but so are nearly two-thirds of adults aged 35-44, more than half of 45-54 year-olds, and 40% of adults over 55.
The days of gaming as a male dominated bedroom recreation are also long gone. PCH is just the latest research to find that women are a hugely significant target audience. Per the report, younger men game at a slightly higher rate than younger women. However, that flipflops when considering the 55 and up demographic; however, a materially larger share of women over 55 say they regularly game.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, more than three times as many regular gamers play free games than play paid or a mix of both. Two thirds of American women prefer free games over paid, and men prefer free games twice as much as paid.
“Paid game use is primarily driven by younger players,” Shapiro writes. “This reinforces findings from a number of our surveys that younger consumers are more comfortable paying for content than their elder peers.”
The size and intergenerational make-up of the free gamer community makes it an attractive audience for advertisers and is why Shaprio suggests that’s why in-game marketing is one of the fastest growing sectors in advertising.
Free gaming may dominate adult game-play, but that doesn’t mean playing is free. In-game purchases are a sizable driver of gaming economics. These can come in the form of virtual objects, extra lives, or loot boxes.
Per PCH, 41% of 45-54 year olds say they make in-game purchases, and one-fifth of gamers over 55 buy lives, objects, or other stuff in the games they play.
“No game is truly free,” notes Shapiro.
When it does come to paid games, it is subscriptions which are growing fast. PlayStation+, for instance, has around 50 million paying subscribers worldwide. Gamers stream billions of hours of gaming related content each year, but the market is dominated by younger players 25 and under.
“The battle royale for gaming subs is amongst the biggest gaming companies in the business, and some of the largest most powerful companies on the planet,” says Shapiro. “This makes for a hard-fought, fragmented marketplace.”
Considering more than 50 billion hours of gaming content will be live-streamed in 2023, it’s safe to say that gamers under 24 stream at higher rates than all these demos.
“Something I found quite surprising is that in gaming livestream, YouTube Live is bigger than Facebook Gaming and Twitch, combined.”
Those in more traditional film and TV should take note, Shapiro says. “The majority of adults with growing expendable income, are spending more and more of their free time and money in games, and advertisers are spending more and more of their money on gaming platforms.
Most adults in the US are gamers. And at least half of those gamers are women. As the PCH data shows, much about the gaming market is unexpected or even counter to conventional thinking.
Hollywood is commissioning more video game adaptations than ever, but the video game industry isn’t necessarily flocking to Tinsel Town.
January 10, 2024
Posted
December 19, 2023
What Comes Next for the Creator Economy? (Um, Apart from That $480 Billion)
TL;DR
A national poll identified 27 million people, or 14% of 16 to 54-year-olds, working as “influencers” in the US economy.
The creator economy could be a $480 billion industry by 2027 as it continues to grow a sizable business ecosystem around social media stars.
Yet traffic and wealth tends to be concentrated among a very few creators with less than 10% of full-timers earning a decent wage and the vast majority making less than $2,000 a year.
The latest innovation driving the creator economy forward is artificial intelligence.
While there is near universal agreement about the growing size and importance of the creator economy, estimates vary widely. For example: Citi estimates there are more than 120 million content creators generating $60 billion of revenue, a figure which it estimates is growing at about 10% per year.
Goldman Sachs research has a very different estimate, saying the total addressable market of the creator economy could roughly double in size over the next five years to $480 billion by 2027 from $250 billion today.
Meanwhile, it estimates there are presently 50 million global creators, growing at 10-20% per year — far less than Citi.
In a national poll of 5,854 Americans market researcher Keller identified 27 million people, or 14% of 16 to 54 year olds, working as “influencers” in the US economy.
However, there is consensus that growth has not stopped and will be driven by investment in influencer marketing and the rise of ad-revenue-share models, particularly in short-form video on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
As Goldman Sachs puts it, creators earn income primarily through direct branding deals to pitch products as an influencer; via a share of ad revenues with the host platform; and through subscriptions, donations and other forms of direct payment from followers. Brand deals are the main source of revenue at about 70%, according to its data.
eMarketer’s Insider Intelligence forecasts that in 2024, US influencer-marketing spend will hit $5.89 billion, and that its growth will “remain in the double digits through 2025.“
“The funds are not drying up anytime soon and we are seeing more and more people becoming creators,” Shannae Ingleton Smith, president and CEO of Kensington Grey Agency tells Amanda Perelli at Business Insider. “It’s a viable career space and in many cases pays more than the top tech jobs. Where the advertising dollars are, to me, is a great indication of sustainability.”
Since its inception in the mid-2000s the creator economy has also grown to encompass a range of professionals who work for creators. These range from managers to video editors, as well as tech execs who have built platforms and companies to help creators make money and build audiences.
She interviews Kate Lingua-Marina, a creator known by her handle @SiliconValleyGirl, who explains that she made my first video in 2014 while applying to universities in the United States. She decided to document her journey — and her views exploded to the point that she now has three YouTube channels and a vlogging channel.
“I used to film everything myself,” Lingua-Marina says. “These days I have videographers who helped me from time to time depending on the type of content that I’m creating. I have several editors to help me with editing. If someone helps me post on platforms. I have a manager who’s responsible for working with brands.”
But not everyone can be a MrBeast. In fact, no one should be mistaken that becoming an influencer is an easy way to make money.
Only about 4% of global creators are deemed professionals, meaning they pull in more than $100,000 a year, finds Goldman Sachs.
A recent survey of 689 creators by the influencer-marketing platform Mavrck found about 51% made less than $500 a month. In the survey, nearly a quarter of creators said they earned more than $2,000, and about 4% said they earned more than $10,000 per month.
Keller’s research concluded that 6% of Americans full-time creators and earn an average of $179,000 per year but that the average income is $93,000 per year. More than half of creators make less than $10,000 annually and a third only make $2,000.
“While the livelihood of the 11.6 million full-time creators (in the States) is a robust $179K/year, the total number of creators is larger than most estimates, likely based on the one third of them who earn less than 2K a year,” the researcher notes.
The creative economy is also facing mixed financial signals. After a flat 2022 YouTube ad revenues were up around 5% by the third quarter of 2023. Creators received just over half of the ad revenue generated on their channels. On the other hand, investment in the creative economy has dropped sharply with total funding for us startups fell 50% last year compared to 2021.
Revenue and funding going into platforms has decreased quite dramatically.
Criddle says, “One key problem for the creator economy is that creator traffic and wealth tends to be concentrated among the very few, such as MrBeast. Only 4% of creators are defined as professionals earning at least $100,000 a year.”
While the creative economy might be moving away from past explosive growth, there is evidence consumers remain willing to pay for quality content.
“The days of wild growth might be over or at least on hold but that’s not going to stop the millions of creators out there,” Criddle says. “There is enough demand, enough supply and now is the time when the focus should shift from quantity to quality.”
AI Comes to the Creator Economy
The latest innovation driving the creator economy forward is artificial intelligence.
This year, YouTube unveiled new AI tools and features aimed at simplifying content creation. According to Business Insider, the industry is betting on AI not to replace creators, but to increase productivity and bring more opportunities for people to make content.
Rising AI startups in the creator economy like Crate, an AI platform helping creators streamline the creative process, and Midjourney, an AI model that can generate images, are winning over investors.
Keller’s survey found half of Creators saying they want to start working with AI and that virtual reality/augmented reality is #2 on their list of tech they’d like to engage with in the future.
In a recent survey of 2,000 influencers by membership platform Creator Now, 90% said they were using ChatGPT during the content creation process, and 31% said they were using Midjourney. The top reason cited for using AI was to increase the speed of content creation. AI tools can edit TikTok or YouTube videos in a fraction of the time it takes today.
“AI is a game changer,” says a creator speaking to the Financial Times. “The first time we used it was to create a script. I had to change some things, but it was right there in front of me in 60 seconds.
“If I create an AI version of myself, if AI create scripts, then my job is to decide which content goes out there and which topic my AI prototype is talking about. Good creators are becoming producers.”
She expects that artificial intelligence tools will drive the professionalization of the influencer class. Moore explains, creators are “going to amplify their creativity to a new level. They’re going to come back with insights into the audience and say, ‘I’m going to set you apart.’ The ones who are having fun, making a little passive income — they’re going to find it harder to create.”
The creator economy emerges as a powerful force in the digital marketing landscape, reshaping the way brands connect with consumers.
January 3, 2024
Posted
December 10, 2023
AI for M&E: Things Are Going to Get Complicated
TL;DR
Across M&E, generative AI will be increasingly used to drive down costs resulting in the replacement of many human jobs by computers.
Coming into play in 2024, there will be guardrails in the form of case law surrounding copyright as AI exponents assert their right to fair use and artists fight back.
AI is now a marketplace and open to any number of startups including in the M&E space. On a wider level there will be a battle between Big Tech closed models and smaller open source startups.
Battle lines will be fought in three areas: the legal right to use AI; between open source and proprietary AI tool developers in IT; and Hollywood Studios versus the legion of employees from A-list talent to production crew.
Few industries will be more directly impacted by generative AI than Media & Entertainment and as it evolves in its second year, the battle lines are being drawn.
Broadly, the battle lines will be fought in three areas: the legal right to use AI; between open source and proprietary AI tool developers in IT; and Hollywood Studios versus the legion of employees from A-list talent to production crew.
Hollywood and AI
The resolution of the strikes both for actors and writers has only advanced the issue a couple of years down the road. Ultimately, it would seem, M&E is going to be shaken up for better and for worse.
“The last decade in film and TV was defined by the disruption of content distribution and the next decade will be defined by the disruption of content creation,” summed up industry analyst Doug Shapiro in an extensive post on Medium explaining how all aspects of production would impacted.
In its special report, “Generative AI in Film & TV,” Variety found the tech already beginning to disrupt traditional methods, with generative AI tools currently used to automate some creative tasks. Its impact stands to be positive, Variety concluded, “as it eliminates rote work, speeds project timelines and allows productions to pursue previously impossible creative paths prohibited by constraints on cost, time and even physical reality.”
At the same time, Variety notes that its use promises to reduce the need for certain processes and workers to achieve the same level of output. Spelled out: That’s job losses.
Shaprio breaks down the costs of production costs for movies including the 50% of “below-the-line” crew and production costs of which 25-30% is post-production (and of this percentage, mostly VFX). All in all, roughly two-thirds of these costs are labor, he says. “It is a sensitive topic for good reason, but over time GenAI-enabled tools promise (and threaten) to replace large proportions of this labor.”
Practical use cases are already cropping up across all stages of the TV and film production process. These include story development, storyboarding/animatics, pre-visualization, B-roll, editing, VFX and localization services.
How far will this all go? Even making the relatively conservative assumption that TV and film projects will always require both human creative teams and human actors, Shapiro says future potential use cases include: the elimination of soundstages and locations, the elimination of costumes and makeup and even “first pass editing.”
“In the future, it is likely that editing software will make a first pass at an edit, which can then be reviewed by a human editor,” he suggests. “Similarly, it’s easy to envision an editing co-pilot or a VFX co-pilot that could create and adjust VFX in response to natural language prompts.”
You can argue, as Shapiro does, that we have a “visceral negative reaction” to anything that’s supposed to look human but doesn’t, the so-called ‘uncanny valley.
“In which case we will still need human actors, possibly for a long time — but it would also mean that every other part of the physical production process would be subject to being replaced synthetically.”
All of this will likely have a profound effect on production costs. “Over time, the cost curve for all non-Above The Line costs may converge with the cost curve of compute,” is Shapiro’s possibly true if disheartening conclusion.
The potential for lower production costs would seem a silver lining for Studios but it also presents a daunting change management challenge.
“Studios should start either by experimenting with non-core processes or developing skunkworks studios to develop ‘AI-first’ content from scratch,” Shapiro says.
Peter Csathy in TheWrap thinks the major studios, faced with mounting Wall Street pressure to transform their business models, will begin to focus on generative AI “to increase output and cut costs.” Early experiments he suggests will include hyper-automation in visualization and initial uses of “Synthetic Performers.”
Streamers like Netflix, “with Big Tech DNA coursing through their veins,” will lead the way, he says.
Legislation to Tackle and Protect
The EU and the US Congress as well as individual states at the federal level will pass significant AI legislation that directly impacts the M&E industry in the next 12 to 18 months. President Joe Biden’s recent Executive Order points the way.
“Congress will demand that the Big Tech companies behind GenAI give some basic level of transparency about the material on which their large language models are trained,” says Csathy. “Regulators will also try to get ahead of the game — a stark contrast to when they were largely absent when social media rose in popularity and importance (and caused significant harm).”
Csathy expects the creative community to do its best to keep AI companies honest by implementing so-called “forensic AI tech” like watermarking to identify whether relevant creative works were “scraped” or not. That in turn will promote “opt in” solutions for AI training.
Startups to Rival Big Tech
The battle between proprietary AI and open source AI is at its fiercest. Broadly speaking this is the battle between Big Tech and smaller start-ups and the battle is being fought in the market. Perhaps OpenAI/ChatGPT’s lasting legacy will be in opening up the first bona fide market for AI. In fact, AI — as the moving chairs at OpenAI have shown — is no longer controlled by scientists in the lab but by Wall Street.
CambrianAI analyst Alberto Romero, in his blog The Algorithmic Bridge on Substack, characterizes the debate like this: “The open-source scene is vibrant, full of enthusiasts who firmly believe AI shouldn’t be in the hands of the few and are working relentlessly to make their vision of a better, democratized world through AI a reality. They have detractors who think AI, as a (potentially) very powerful (and thus dangerous) technology, shouldn’t be available for anyone to use.”
He adds, “If the open-source community wasn’t pushing as hard as it is, closed businesses would capture all the value.”
Open source-based startups are also growing in number and in quality of output.
“They’re catching up with the best models, such as GPT-4,” says Romero. “While closed-source LLMs [like ChatGPT] generally outperform their open-source counterparts, the progress on the latter has been rapid with claims of achieving parity or even better on certain tasks. This has crucial implications not only on research but also on business.”
He thinks that the era of extremely large models dominating AI was just a phase and it’s coming to an end.
“Small and cheap is the future,” he says. “Open-source AI is becoming a powerful counterforce to Big AI as more people realize that this tech shouldn’t be in the hands of a few — it’s catching up.”
Csathy thinks Big Tech companies like Alphabet will try to have it both ways. “Desperate to keep up with OpenAI (and Microsoft) Alphabet will relentlessly march on with its AI development while trotting out its new SynthID watermarking solution to quell the creative masses,” he predicts.
“Alphabet throws these bones to the creative community, while its stock price rockets upward and the entertainment industry struggles to monetize amidst its continuing transfer of wealth to the Big Tech players that disrupt it.”
Industry analyst Forrester predicts wide adoption of bring-your-own-AI (BYOAI) tools, with organizations struggling to manage the impact.
January 8, 2024
Posted
December 4, 2023
Evan Shapiro: We May Not “Get” Data Ownership, But We Know It Matters
TL;DR
Evan Shapiro shares the results of a recent PCH Research study assessing American attitudes about data and privacy. The results are a bit surprising (and maybe even depressing).
The good news is that Americans believe their data is personal and that they should be responsible for maintaining their own privacy. But belief isn’t translating into knowledge or confidence in their choices.
Businesses need to account for these attitudes and help consumers, not take advantage of them. Americans say they are willing to punish companies that abuse their data-gathering ordon’t respect privacy.
“Americans understand way less about how …personal data is collected and used than responsible adult humans should,” Evan Shapiro argues.
He grounds this opinion in a survey of 45,000 Americans (aged 25 and up) that he conducted with Publishers Clearing House, in conjunction with Syracuse University’s Daniela Molta and NYU’s Tiffany Johnson (founder of Xente Data).
Shapiro describes the findings as a “study of Americans’ knowledge, awareness, and understanding of their data privacy and how companies and organizations use the information we volunteer (often unwittingly)” in a recent Substack post.
Unfortunately, Shapiro says, “[T]he answers Americans gave to these questions are both surprising and alarming.” The study concludes, “Americans who are not data savvy are unlikely to see the value in their data and the ways to guard it.”
Some Topline Findings
First, it’s notable that respondents indicated that they considered all of their data to be personal, although they ranked social media, workout behaviors, political information and other readily available information as “less” personal.
Second, Shapiro and co. found “86% of Americans A25+ are concerned about the privacy and security of personal information and data. It ranks just below the current cost of living and just above the state of the economy.”
Interestingly, “[t]he majority of Americans A25+ consider themselves to be private people (82%) who are cautious about security (77%), yet only 51% feel informed about how their personal data is being used by companies, government, and social entities,” according to the PCH study. Yikes.
For example, consumers are not confident about their cookie decisions, despite being confronted with them daily. “Concern for data privacy and security, tied with increased data literacy, will place more pressure on companies to go above and beyond to protect people’s data,” Shapiro predicts.
What This Means for Businesses
Despite evidence of data illiteracy, consumers increasingly believe that they are responsible for their own data; 87% of respondents agreed they should take ownership of their data privacy.
However, “we know the barriers to managing individual data are high, especially for those who don’t have a strong foundation of data and digital knowledge,” Shapiro writes.
Despite the pervasiveness of the data economy, Americans also seem to be less than thrilled about data sharing. In fact, 38% of respondents said they’d prefer to never share their data, while 2% thought they’d trade it in exchange for knowing about new goods or services.
One-third who’d be willing to share their data said they would want to control access, and it was slightly more important than monetary compensation (30%) and ranked significantly above altruism (24%).
But that doesn’t mean respondents don’t value their data. “Consumers view their DNA (50%), Biometric (47%) and Banking (44%) information as the top three most valuable categories of data, believing that data is worth $500+. While these top three categories are considered the most valuable to consumers, they are also the most widely sought after by public and private organizations (think Ancestry, Clear Travel, and every credit card and banking institution).”
And this doesn’t mean Americans expect businesses to eschew corporate responsibility.
If anything, it may indicate a lack of trust and an understanding that a two- or three-pronged (adding in government oversight) approach will be necessary to correct the path we’ve been on for the past three decades. In fact, the study found 64% “believe that both government and businesses should be responsible for data privacy and security.”
Additionally, past behavior shows that consumers will change their behavior if they believe companies have been irresponsibly using their data. Both Meta (formerly Facebook) and Wells Fargo saw significant fallout from privacy and data misuse scandals.
What Can, Will (and Should) Be Done
Shapiro writes, “[S]urvey respondents indicated they are willing to take more action against businesses they don’t trust, leading to a long-term decline for companies who violate consumer trust.”
Also, the study notes, “the change in cookie tracking and targeting will continue to make it difficult for quality advertisers to find their audiences. This signals a need to change their data approach, which opens the door for ‘Permission Marketing’ and gives businesses the chance to redefine how they think of loyal consumers and stops wasting marketing dollars on consumers who have indicated they aren’t interested.”
Shapiro notes that there is a current patchwork of data privacy legislation (and proposed legislation) in the U.S., creating a difficult environment for businesses and consumers alike. The study advocates for federal action to both regulate data collection and to educate consumers about their rights and responsibilities.
Some red flags: About two-thirds of respondents said they were unsure or chose an incorrect answer when asked whether “Companies with ethical standards and data privacy policies do not sell my data” and “I can stop advertisers and marketers from collecting and using my personal data to target ads online to me”. Also, Americans in the 44-65 year-old cohort were more likely to be unsure or incorrect about these answers, indicating that there is an information gap to be filled.
But the good news is that “there is a desire to learn more and do more” to protect consumer data; in fact, “48% of survey respondents agree with the statement ‘I am willing to learn what kind of data is being collected about me’.”
Evan Shapiro and Justin Evans examine how data analytics and engagement are critical in the maturation of Free Ad-Supported Television (FAST)
November 28, 2023
Jaron Lanier: We Need AI Regulation and Data Provenance (ASAP)
TL;DR
Tech guru and Microsoft scientist Jaron Lanier adds his voice to those calling for regulation of AI.
He says all data should have its provenance tracked to ensure integrity, reward where reward is due, and to curb deepfakes.
Lanier thinks more executives in Big Tech companies (like him) should speak more freely and be prepared to criticize in order to build a better business and a better society.
Tech visionary Jaron Lanier is calling for regulation in AI, arguing that it is in the best interest of society — and that of Big Tech.
As part of that regulation, Lanier, who now works at Microsoft, also argues for all data used by AI models to have its origin and ownership declared, to counter the threat from misinformation and deepfakes.
“All of us, Microsoft, Open AI, everybody in AI of any scale is and saying, we do want to be regulated. [AI] is a place where regulation makes sense,” Lanier told Bloomberg’s AI IRL videocast. “We want to be regulated because everybody can see [that AI] could be like the troubles of social media, times a thousand. We want to be regulated. We don’t want to mess up society. We depend on society for our business. You know, markets are fast and creative. And you don’t get that without a stable layer created by regulation.”
Speaking to the idea of “data dignity,” Lanier explained that this is the notion that creators should be compensated, especially if their data is being used to train algorithms.
Provenance
“In order to do it, we have to calculate and present the provenance of which human sources were the most important to give an AI output. We don’t currently do that. We can though. We can do it efficiently and effectively,” Lanier says. “It’s just that we’re not yet. And it has to be a societal decision to shift to doing that.”
He admits to being “scared” of the potential for misinformation caused by unregulated AI use interfering with politics but feels the answer to deep fakes is provenance. “If you know where data came from, you no longer worry about deep fakes. The provenance system has to be robust.”
Lanier’s Role
Lanier’s bizarre title at Microsoft is “Prime Unifying Scientist,” something he admitted was a humorous attempt to encompass everything he does, like an octopus.
“I have come to resemble one, or so my students tell me, and I’m also very interested in their neurology. They have amazing nervous systems. So we thought it would be an appropriate title.”
However, this gives him something of a free-roaming role both inside and outside the company. He was at pains to point out that he was not speaking here in an official Microsoft capacity.
In fact, Lanier has become a fierce critic of the industry he helped build, but he wants to challenge it to do better from within.
“To be an optimist, you have to have the courage to be a fearsome critic. It’s the critic who believes things can be better. The critic is the true optimist, even if they don’t like to admit it. The critic is the one who says this can be better.”
Open Source Concerns
For example, he doesn’t think the open source model for AI or Web3 makes any sense. He poured scorn on the idea that open source would democratize and decentralize the internet and its reward system.
“I think the open source idea comes from a really good place and that people who believe in it, believe that it makes things more open and democratic, and honest and safe. The problem with it is this idea that opening things leads to decentralization is just mathematically false. Instead of decentralization, you end up with hyper-centralization and monopoly. And then that hub is incentivized to keep certain things very secret and proprietary, like its algorithms.”
Instead, he advocates for a market economy, in which people and businesses pay to use technology, like AI. He hints that doing so would fund data provenance and retain data integrity.
Lanier says he doesn’t agree with the founder of OpenAI, Sam Altman, on everything, including his notion of a universal cryptocurrency: “I think that some criminal organization will take that over, no matter how robust he tries to make it.”
The Benefits of Speaking Up
He says being able to criticize from within Big Tech is actually beneficial for Microsoft’s own business.
“I’ve tried to create a proof of that, where I can say things that are not official Microsoft. Look, I spend all day working on making Microsoft stuff better. And I really am proud that people want to buy our stuff and want to buy our stock. I like our customers. I like working with them. I like the idea of making something that somebody likes enough to pay you money for it. That to me is the market economy.”
Lanier wants to persuade colleagues at Meta and Google to speak their minds more, too.
“If the other tech companies had a little bit of [free] speech in it might actually be healthy for them. I think it would actually improve the business performance of companies like Google and Meta. You know, they’re notoriously closed off. They don’t have people who speak, and I think they suffer for that, [even if] you might not think so because they are they’re big successful companies. I really think they could do more.”
He says there are four or five other execs at Microsoft with public careers outside the company who speak their mind.
“I think it’s been a successful model. Do I agree with absolutely everything that happens in Microsoft? Of course not. I mean, listen, it’s as big as a country, you know.”
Russell Wald at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered AI argues for regulation that provides safeguards but doesn’t stifle innovation.
November 25, 2023
How Influencer-Generated Content Has Become Core to Brand Strategies
TL;DR
In the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, the creator economy has emerged as a powerful force, reshaping the way brands connect withconsumers.
An overwhelming majority of brands are using creator-generated content for channels beyond social media, highlighting its versatility and reach, a new survey finds.
The terms “creator” and “influencer” tend to be used interchangeably, but marketers are applying different metrics to judge the performance of each.
Influencer-generated content is now core to brand strategies, with marketers increasingly savvy about the differences between creators and influencers and how to measure their performance.
A recent study conducted by creator marketing platform LTK underlines the profound impact of creator marketing, an industry now estimated at $21 billion globally.
Next year, worldwide, marketers are expected to spend more than $32 billion on influencer marketing. Influencer spend is now outpacing traditional ad investment, with 80% of brands saying they increased creator budgets in 2023, per the report.
Some 92% of brands plan to increase their spending on creators in 2024, and 36% plan to spend at least half of their entire digital marketing budget on creators.
Because of what LTK calls the “significant trust” creators have built with their communities, the majority of brands it surveyed said consumers are turning to creators the most compared to social media ads and celebrities.
An overwhelming majority of brands (98%) are using creator content for channels beyond just social media, highlighting its versatility and reach.
Indeed, when asked where their marketing dollars are shifting, creator marketing and connected TV shared the top position overall for investment growth, beating out channels like paid search and paid social.
The study also found that dollars are being moved from digital ads to creator marketing because the scale of creator marketing has proven to be more efficient when compared to side-by-side, all-cost measurement.
Marketers, however, are becoming more discerning about the difference between influencers and creators.
“As marketers have got more comfortable with the creator economy, influencers have become the go-to for performance marketing, while creators are considered more for branding purposes,” says Krystal Scanlon, writing at Digiday.
Marketers are feeling the pressure to be super transparent and efficient about their purchases and the reasons behind them. This means they’re getting specific about when it’s better to collaborate with an influencer versus a creator.
Lindsey Bott, senior content manager at Ruckus Marketing, told Scanlon, “Previously, influencer involvement might have organically emerged in ongoing discussions. Now, we’re seeing brands come to us more frequently with well-defined briefs or specific suggestions right from the outset.”
The days of pay-for-reach deals are long gone, it seems. In fact, influencers increasingly have specific metrics, such as engagement rate, CPM, CPE, clicks, click-through rate and conversions, tied to them.
For example, Bott’s team has observed clients gravitating toward influencers due to their established reach and engagement metrics, emphasizing performance-driven results.
Conversely, there’s a growing interest in creators who prioritize crafting genuine, narrative-based content that closely aligns with a brand’s values and campaign themes.
“They’re unbelievable storytellers who can really shape perception,” Keith Bendes, VP of strategy at Linqia, reports at Digiday.
Unlike influencers, creators usually don’t have the same set of metrics tied to them.
“Over time, as marketers understand how a specific creator’s content performs when repurposed on their social channels or paid media, they may start to benchmark specific benchmarks for that creator’s assets,” said Lindsey Gamble, associate director at influencer marketing platform Mavrck.
According to Scanlon, this shift underscores how brands are distinguishing between utilizing audience influence and cultivating content that profoundly connects with their intended audience.
“Creators have evolved into valuable assets for brands, capable of driving substantial business impact,” says Rodney Mason, VP and head of marketing at LTK, writes at Adweek. “As we move into 2024, creator marketing is fundamental shifting how brands engage with consumers. Those marketers who embrace the rise of creators will find themselves at the forefront of this transformative wave. The time to invest in creators and their unique ability to influence, engage and build trust with consumers is now.”
In a recent webinar, “The Next Wave of Creator Marketing: 2024 Forecast,” LTK’s director of strategy insights brand partnerships, Ally Anderson, shares more detail about how “creator guided shopping” is becoming the foundation for marketing efforts and now influencing consumers through all aspects of their discovery journey. Watch the full presentation in the video below:
Continued growth will be driven by marketing through short-form videos on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
November 20, 2023
Gavin Guidry: How to Get Great Content From/With/By Creators
TL;DR
Gavin Guidry, creative director at Spotify, maintains there’s a “massive disconnect” between the mindset of a marketer and that of a creator and outlines what can be done to address this. Watch his full presentation above.
By putting creators in the driver’s seat, brands can create content that is unique and relevant and that cuts through to audiences.
The secret ingredient to all of this is community “because relevance comes through creating consistent impact.”
Brands can no longer just post content and hope that audiences on social media platforms will actually see it. They either need a massive spend, or they need to cross collaborate or pay to collaborate with a creator to actually get their content seen.
“Really what we’re seeing is a brand’s ability to impact audiences going down, while creators’ ability to impact audiences is steadily moving upwards,” says Gavin Guidry, creative director at Spotify. “That means the road to relevance must go through real people.”
In a video published on Vimeo titled “The Road to Relevant Video Content,” held as part of Vimeo’s Outside the Frame event, Guidry talks marketers through the ins and outs of a successful influencer collaboration. Guidry heads up Spotify’s podcasts, working with creators and brands to create content.
He claims there’s a “massive disconnect” between the mindset of a marketer and that of a creator.
What Creators Want to Make
A marketer cares about KPIs, ROI and brand perception, he says, but creators care about authenticity and connection to their community above all else. They don’t always know what marketers want, and marketers don’t always know what creators want.
“But when creators have a say in making content, you get content that’s authentic and connected to their community, and it can help you check your marketing boxes as well. Working with creators helps your brand actually build credibility.
“The good thing about working with creators from a fan perspective is that monetizing doesn’t feel like buying — it feels like supporting a creator that they love.”
Some 49% of consumers says they rely on influencer recommendations for their purchasing decisions.
“People trust people more than they do brands, and algorithms are responding to that. Hiring an influencer to create your video content is a winning strategy, but the collaboration can be fraught.”
Creating Impact
The secret to success is community “because relevance comes through creating consistent impact.”
Guidry insists, “It’s not about chasing cultural relevance; it’s about earning community relevance.”
He outlines three steps to create impact through community: get vulnerable; collaborate with influencers; use video.
Vulnerability is not a marketing metric, or a business tactic. It’s more of a soft skill, he explains. It’s about showing that your brand is human.
“When a brand doesn’t open themselves up, they don’t ask the community what they want, they just give them content without really asking. And that can end up exploiting a community. The goal is to ramp up your vulnerability by asking your audience, what they want.”
Guidry urges brands “to embrace risk” because getting vulnerable requires exposure to meaningful risks.
This will lead to better creator collaboration. It means going deeper than demographics to truly understand the creator’s audience.
“The term creator is really broad — they could be comedians, writers, hosts, musicians, even activists — but the thing that binds them all together is that they make content that nourishes audiences. So it’s important to know that creators have their own audience, their own style and their own motivation.”
For creators, their audience is “what they spend their blood, sweat and tears curating with their content. You don’t want to ask them to do anything that their audience will find unauthentic.”
Instead, seek to understand their audience and what you can offer them through this partnership.
Creator, Collaborator, Partner
Think about style — the way a creator talks or the way that they create for their audience. Don’t present a campaign that fits outside their style, but do seek their input on how their content comes to life through their unique lens.
Consider a creator’s motivation. Guidry says there’s a bit of a misconception with creators that it’s all about the money.
“That couldn’t be further from the truth. Creators are probably more excited than you are to work with big brands. It’s like a feather in their cap. They’re able to say, ‘Hey look audience, I’m now able to work with these brands.'”
But don’t just seek a transactional deal with creators, Guidry advises. “Seek to build a long term relationship that creators can talk about with their audiences over time. Offer a mutually beneficial partnership that results in creators raising their profile through your partnership.”
Of course, you want to make sure you find a creator with the right niche and an engaged audience. You want to make sure that creator is an authentic user of your brand or product and that they have a strong style and POV.
“You also want to make sure that they’re professional, and that they have craft that can elevate your brand.
“Lastly, use video. Over 200 million people consider themselves as creators, and this means that your audience is just a resource of creativity waiting to be unlocked. You can use video and creative partnerships to do just that. It’s the best way to engage audiences with CTAs and educate in relevant ways.
“You get video that’s raw and real and shows your brand is human. And you get to sit back and let your videos woo a built-in audience.”
He sums up: “So if you didn’t hear anything else I said today, when you prioritize community and build authentic creator relationships, you can create relevant video content.”
An Artlist survey of business leaders and more than 7,000 creators to uncover the trends your business needs to know in 2024, revealed that Gen Z is at the forefront of this scrutiny, demanding even more tailored and genuine experiences.
Artlist suggest brands follow these steps to create a smooth working relationship:
1. Open and clear communication
Discuss expectations, objectives, creative freedom, timelines, and deliverables from the outset. It’s also important to have regular feedback sessions and open two-way communication throughout the process.
2. Get to know each other
The whole process and the end results will always be better if both the brand and the creator take the time to get to know each other. Share information about working styles, audience, and creative vision and see if it’s a good fit before starting the project.
3. Be fair and respectful
Creators deserve to be fairly compensated for their time and effort, and brands deserve to receive high-quality content on time. Make sure you’ve sorted out all the compensation timing and expected deliverables in a detailed brief and legal contract.
4. Build long-term relationships
Instead of viewing collaborations as one-off transactions, brands and collaborators should look at how they can continue to work together in the future. This continuity is beneficial for the brand and creator and helps the audience see a familiar face or content style.
In today’s digital world, when every brand is also now a content business, brands can’t just rely on providing a good product or service. They also need to genuinely engage their audience and that means working in the right way with the right creator.
Casey Neistat is most famous as a YouTuber, but that wasn’t his goal… his career “wasn’t an option” when he started creating videos.
November 12, 2023
Posted
November 12, 2023
Evan Shapiro: “What’s Next” for Media in the User-Centric Era — Part 1
Watch media universe cartographer Evan Shapiro’s keynote address, “What’s Next” at the 2023 NAB Show New York.
TL;DR
Media universe cartographer Evan Shapiro’s keynote address at NAB Show New York centered on the pivotal shift to a new user-centric era of media, unveiling new consumer research and urging industry adaptation.
Demonstrating the volatility of the media ecosystem, a Publishers Clearing House survey of 27,000 people in the US found that only 7% of users planned to stick with their current suite of subscriptions over the next year.
Shapiro discusses the “Hierarchy of Feeds” as a crucial adaptation strategy for media companies to meet the diverse and daily needs of consumers.
Highlighting the unexpected rise of local news, Shapiro underscores its significant role and potential for growth in the media landscape.
Shapiro spotlights the rapid growth of Free Ad-Supported Television (FAST), which is projected to reach a global market value of $20 billion by 2028.
Media universe cartographer Evan Shapiro commanded the Main Stage at NAB Show New York in October with a keynote address that urged industry professionals to embrace the inevitable: a new era where user choice dictates the flow of content and technology giants carve the path forward. With his customary wit, Shapiro unveiled fresh consumer research and a set of strategic imperatives designed to navigate the shifting currents of media consumption.
Going beyond analysis, Shapiro’s presentation is a call to action, depicting a future that’s unfolding in real time. From the “Hierarchy of Feeds” to the new “Rules of Gravity” in a media world centered around the consumer, he provides a practical guide for industry adaptation.
Explore key highlights in NAB Amplify’s two-part report, and gain full access to Shapiro’s insights by watching the keynote address in the video at the top of the page.
The User-Centric Era of Media Is Already Here
The Media & Entertainment landscape is undergoing a profound transformation with consumers now at the helm, while tech giants diversify to deliver a “Hierarchy of Feeds” including “must-haves.” Shapiro, in his keynote, delineates this transition with strategic imperatives for navigating these changes as he urges industry professionals to acknowledge and adapt to the present realities of media consumption.
“I think there’s this misperception that we’re coming to what’s next, that what’s next is around the corner… maybe a few years off, and that’s absolutely untrue,” he says at head of his talk. “What’s next is already here.”
The gravitational pull of what Shapiro calls “big tech Death Stars” is reshaping the media universe. His two most recent media maps, sized by market share and communities, illustrate this point vividly. Companies must now operate in a domain where the rules are written by the likes of Amazon, Apple and Google — entities that command a significant share of global mobile users and advertising spend. At the same time, these big tech companies have ceded enormous power to users, who program personalized media bundles on a daily basis using just their thumbs.
Addressing changing media consumption habits, Shapiro revealed a Publishers Clearing House survey of 27,000 people in the US, which found that only 7% of users planned to stick with their current suite of subscriptions. “Now, math is not my best topic,” he acknowledges. “But what I understand is that means that 97% of consumers are rethinking some or parts or all of their subscriptions that they have in their home on a month to month basis. Ready to switch out, ready to cancel.”
Shapiro emphasizes “Hierarchy of Feeds” as critical for adaptation to the user-centric era of media. “This is the set of itches [consumers are] looking to scratch when they wake up every morning and pick up that first piece of glass.” Media companies, he says, must ask themselves, “Do I touch all these needs? If not, there are plenty of companies who do, and if not, consumers are going to be spending time with other forms of media while they’re not paying attention to you.”
The New York Times serves as a prime example of a legacy media company that successfully transitioned its business model from a print-centric approach to becoming a multimedia conglomerate. They achieved this by diversifying into “lifestyle bundles” that cater to a variety of consumer “must-haves,” ranging from games and sports to news, entertainment, food, video and television.
Samsung has also adapted to cater to users. The company isn’t “just a manufacturer of televisions,” Shapiro notes, but also an operating system and channel business. “Google isn’t just a platform with video and audio, but also the maker of the fastest growing connected television operating system on the face of the earth. Amazon isn’t just Prime and free shipping and Twitch, but also the manufacturer of Fire,” he continues.
“You have to think about being everywhere your consumers are because you need to build your business around them, not make them fit into your business.”
Local News Isn’t Just Surviving, It’s Thriving
In an era where the digital transformation of media is often headlined by global platforms and streaming giants, Shapiro spotlights a surprising, yet pivotal player: local news. His analysis reveals a sector that’s not just surviving but thriving amid the media revolution, commanding a significant portion of screen time and audience attention.
As the number one use case for broadcast, “local is not just a segment, it’s a quarter of all TV time,” he points out. “Local urgent programming information that I can use in my daily life is going to be one of if not the most important part of the video economy in the United States and around the rest of the world for the next 10 years.”
The rise of local news isn’t just about numbers; it’s about relevance and the ability to meet the immediate needs of the community. Shapiro notes the fragmented but significant ways people access local content, from FAST news channels to station apps, and the urgent need among younger demographics for local information. “[For] two-thirds of consumers under the age of 45… local news is really important,” he says. “We all need our weather, our local school boards; these things matter more and more on a regular basis.”
Shapiro’s call to action for local media is clear: adapt and innovate. “If you work in local television, think about ‘what’s my website strategy? What’s my app strategy? What’s my FAST strategy, what’s my podcast strategy?’” he advises.
The shift in advertising dollars follows the audience, and local news is no exception. “The money is going to go where the money works,” he says, suggesting that local news can capitalize on this trend by understanding and leveraging the new metrics of media investment, such as cost per activation and video completion.
The Future of FAST
Free Ad-Supported Television (FAST) is staking its claim in the media landscape, with a growth trajectory that commands attention. Shapiro underscores its significance, noting, “FAST is the fastest-growing segment of the video economy.” This trend transcends borders, with the UK, Austria, Brazil, and Germany among the countries riding the FAST wave.
Platforms such as Samsung TV Plus, Roku, and Pluto TV have seen their monthly active users skyrocket, yet Shapiro urges industry professionals to view this data within the broader market perspective. He projects that by 2028 the FAST industry could be worth between $14 to $20 billion dollars worldwide. But while these are impressive numbers, they still pale in comparison to behemoths like YouTube, which is on track to earn a whopping $34 billion this year.
The data reveals a volatile subscription landscape, with premium ASVODs gaining and losing subscribers at a comparable pace. Shapiro interprets this as a potential pivot point for revenue strategies. Even Netflix is branching into advertising, he says, signaling an industry-wide shift towards a hybrid revenue model that combines subscriptions with ads.
While FAST is a crucial piece of the puzzle, Shapiro says, it’s not the sole answer to a media company’s business model challenges. “Yes, FAST is great,” he says. “Yes, FAST is important. Yes, you should be looking at FAST as part of the continuum you’re making out there. But if you’re resting all of your future laurels on this one format, and thinking it’s going to save your business in and of itself and replace all the revenue you’re losing from all these other traditional platforms, not so much.”
Evan Shapiro presents his “7 Rules of Gravity” with actionable steps for building a sustainable media business and thriving in this new era.
November 12, 2023
Posted
November 12, 2023
Evan Shapiro: “What’s Next” for Media in the User-Centric Era — Part 2
Watch media universe cartographer Evan Shapiro’s keynote address, “What’s Next” at the 2023 NAB Show New York.
TL;DR
Evan Shapiro’s keynote address at NAB Show New York continues to dissect the user-centric era of media, focusing on the digital ad revolution and the essential “Rules of Gravity” for the M&E industry to successfully navigate the new landscape.
The streaming boom has led to a saturated market, and Shapiro highlights the challenges of subscription churn and the need for innovative business models to retain viewer engagement and ad revenue.
Shapiro’s analysis of industry data reveals a seismic shift in ad revenue, with digital and CTV ad spending projected to reach nearly $58 billion in 2023, challenging traditional TV’s market dominance.
The advertising paradigm is changing, with a significant portion of ad spend concentrated among a few tech giants and a move towards performance-based digital marketing, emphasizing the importance of ROMI and ROAS in media buying.
Shapiro concludes with his “7 Rules of Gravity,” advocating for integration, a symbiotic relationship between subscriptions and advertising, and the strategic importance of daily engagement, commerce, and diversity in leadership to thrive in the user-centric era.
Backed by new research and fresh market analysis, media universe cartographer Evan Shapiro’s keynote address at NAB Show New York charts a course for navigating the new user-centric era of media, where seismic shifts are rapidly reshaping the industry and the rate of change is constant.
Part 1 of NAB Amplify’s two-part report examines the profound transformation of the Media & Entertainment landscape, from evolving consumption habits to fulfilling consumers’ “Hierarchy of Feeds” as a strategy for thriving in the new era. Part 2 continues the exploration, delving into the digital ad revolution and the pivotal “Rules of Gravity” that can help companies redefine their business strategies.
Explore the key highlights detailed below, and gain full access to Shapiro’s insights by watching the keynote address in the video at the top of the page.
Streaming Ascendant: Growth and Challenges
The streaming sector is experiencing an unprecedented boom, reshaping the M&E landscape with its rapid growth and the challenges that accompany it. As streaming services proliferate, they face the dual challenge of saturating the market while striving to maintain and grow their subscriber bases.
The pandemic, Shapiro notes, served as a catalyst for an unprecedented surge in connected television (CTV) sales and subscriptions, leading to a scenario where “more people have more intelligent televisions than they’ve ever had in more rooms.” This proliferation of smart TVs has not only changed how consumers engage with content but has also raised the stakes for content providers to develop a comprehensive CTV strategy.
Contrary to the belief that younger audiences are averse to paying for content, Shapiro argues that they are discerning but willing to invest in premium experiences. The decision to pay hinges on content relevancy, the presence of exclusive originals, refresh rates, and the breadth of the content library. These factors are pivotal in attracting and retaining the younger demographic, who place a higher value on content quality and exclusivity than on cost.
Shapiro emphasizes the consumer’s newfound power in the user-centric era, with the ability to fluidly navigate between various content offerings, including ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) and subscription-based video on demand (ASVOD), as well as video game platforms. This shift in consumption patterns demands a cohesive content delivery approach from providers.
One of the most pressing issues for streaming services is subscription churn. Shapiro sheds light on the industry’s churn rate, which has seen a significant increase. He explains that every four months, a quarter of all premium ASVOD subscriptions are canceled, a trend that reflects the consumers’ growing propensity for “serial churning” — a cycle of subscribing, binge-watching, and canceling.
“If people are churning out on this massive a basis on a regular month-to-month continuum, keeping the ad dollars in ecosystem is going to be difficult in and of itself. It’s not just a subscription problem; it is also an advertising problem.”
The solution, says Shapiro, is to change how streaming companies charge users for content. “They need to figure out ways that are different than just cancel or not cancel,” he counsels. “It doesn’t have to be a binary choice. What if, I don’t know, Pluto and Paramount+ were the same app? And that when you were done with Paramount, you stop paying but you’re still living inside the Paramount ecosystem, and they can still remarket to you? And instead of having to re-onboard the whole time over again, you just click back on for the paid [content]. What if you only pay when you watch, so you always are subscribed, but you’re only paying based on usage?”
Disregarding the need to change their business models will lead to failure, Shapiro admonishes. “Even Netflix is going to have a hard time over the next five years making their business work if they can’t grow their ad business,” he says. “And if they fall into this trap, their ad business will never work.”
Adapt or Perish: The New Metrics of Media Advertising
The advertising landscape within the media industry is undergoing a pivotal transformation, with digital platforms and Connected TV (CTV) rapidly ascending as the new titans of ad revenue. Shapiro’s analysis of the latest industry data highlights a critical juncture for media entities: evolve swiftly with new advertising trends or face decline.
“If you’re in the ad business It’s going to be an interesting time,” he says, explaining how the US just exited an 11-month decline in advertising but ad sales, while rising, still haven’t returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Digital video and connected TV (CTV) platforms commanded an already impressive $41.1 billion in 2021, soaring to nearly $58 billion in 2023. This steep upward trend in digital ad revenue is reshaping the traditional advertising paradigm, Shapiro says. In 2021, traditional TV held a dominant 62% share of the advertising market, but has now contracted to just 51%. In contrast, the market share for digital video and CTV has ballooned from 38% in 2021 to an impressive 49%, signaling a near equalization with traditional TV’s market presence.
Ad spend is indeed on the rise, says Shapiro, pointing to a recent Google earnings call that reported a 12.5% increase in revenue for YouTube, “but it is not being distributed proportionally across the ecosystem the way it was pre-lockdown,” he cautions, “and it never will be again. It’s going to the big platforms. And it’s going to the places where the ad buyers know that their dollars work.”
Media buyers, he says, are moving out of more traditional upfront deals “into much more performance-based digital marketing” like CTV and digital. Emphasizing that “the money is going to go where the money works,” he points out that a staggering 60% of all ad spend in the United States is funneled to just three companies.
One crucial point, Shapiro adds, is that consumers see creator-led social video as a quality equivalent to professionally-produced content. “More importantly, for your business, advertisers now see it the same way,” he says, easily moving ad budgets back and forth between these two ecosystems on a regular basis based on pricing performance and need case.
“As a provider of ad impressions [you] need to be able to demonstrate that their money isn’t being wasted when they spend it with you,” Shapiro advises, noting that more than half of advertisers, brands and agencies surveyed said return on media investment is the number one metric for determining media buys.
The key to thriving in this new advertising economy, Shapiro says, is understanding and leveraging the metrics that matter. Return on media investment (ROMI) and return on ad spend (ROAS) are becoming the primary metrics for media buying, he asserts. “This number is going to rise [at] every upfront forever, it’s never going to turn back around.”
Shapiro’s “7 Rules of Gravity for the User-Centric Era”
Shapiro concludes his keynote with the “7 Rules of Gravity” for the user-centric era, guiding principles for media entities navigating the new landscape where consumers dictate the orbit.
Rule 1: Integration Over Isolation — Shapiro champions a unified media experience, where users control the convergence of video, audio, social, and games. “The user is the center of all of it,” he insists, advocating for a seamless integration of media services.
Rule 2: Subscription and Advertising Symbiosis — The second rule dismantles the notion that subscriptions and advertising are at odds. Shapiro argues for a complementary relationship where both models can coexist and bolster the other, providing a stable revenue mix.
Rule 3: Global Audience, Local Content — Shapiro highlights the importance of content that resonates locally while reaching globally, especially for the under-40 demographic that constitutes a majority worldwide.
Rule 4: Compete and Cooperate with Tech Giants — Media companies must navigate the delicate balance of both working with and competing against the tech behemoths. Shapiro advises learning from diversified companies like Amazon and Google, which offer bundled services for consumers and advertisers alike.
Rule 5: Daily Engagement is Must-Have — To be indispensable, Shapiro says, media must engage users daily. “Just because they use you today doesn’t mean you’re a must-have,” he cautions, pushing for consistent and compelling daily engagement.
Rule 6: Commerce Pumps the Heart of Media — Shapiro reminds us that commerce is the lifeblood of media, and integrating commerce into media strategies is not just an option but a necessity. “Commerce pumps the heart of media, it always has,” he states.
Rule 7: Representation at the Helm — Shapiro calls for diversity in media leadership, ensuring content reflects and resonates with a broad audience. “The media has too few people at the top from the communities it’s supposed to serve most,” he points out, stressing that a diverse array of voices in leadership positions is not just a moral imperative but a strategic one.
Shapiro’s parting message is one of urgency and action. He implores media companies to align with these principles swiftly, not only to survive but to lead in the user-centric era. The future favors those who place the user at the core of their strategy, who innovate in content, engagement, and commerce, and who act decisively. The era of user-centric media is not on the horizon — it’s here, and the time to adapt is now.
Media universe cartographer Evan Shapiro examines the pivotal shift to a user-centric era of media, supported by new consumer research.
November 6, 2023
Posted
November 5, 2023
When It Comes to M&E Technology, Let’s Separate “Hot” and “Hype”
TL;DR
There’s a wave of pragmatism and caution underlying investment in technology across the industry as buyers reign in their equipment spend.
A report compiled by Caretta Research finds buyers increasingly selective about new developments, focusing instead on creating efficiencies within their technology stack.
Generative AI is identified as the most transformative technology by buyers, but most arestill not yet clear on how they will use it.
Disappointingly, sustainability is not yet having a significant impact on buying decisions, the report finds, although it is becoming a consideration for certain parts of the supply chain.
Buyers still maintain the strategic importance of large global trade shows such as NAB Show and IBC for meeting with vendors.
There’s a wave of pragmatism and caution underlying investment in technology across the industry as buyers reign in their equipment spend.
A report examining Media Technology Buying Decisions, compiled by Caretta Research, finds buyers increasingly selective about new developments and more focused on creating efficiencies within their technology stack.
They are not easily swayed by buzzwords and, although open to persuasion, buyers will not consider futuristic technology without a strong business case and product fit.
“Flashy new technology does not sway buyers,” the report states. “Despite the hype that trade press and industry events create around buzzword trends, buyers are not easily convinced.”
This approach rules out technology that is considered futuristic like the metaverse, Web3 applications and even AR/XR.
Buyers perceive such technology to have “a modest impact in the industry broadly,” and most are not currently considering it in their strategies, the report found.
“Buyers talk to other buyers in order to evaluate whether trendy technology is something to look out for. Few are willing to hedge their bets on unproven solutions.”
Nor do buyers want vendors to overly-influence their own technology strategy and roadmap. “There is skepticism of relying too heavily on vendors to deliver large parts of their supply chain and most are moving away from end-to-end services,” says Caretta. Instead, buyers would prefer to implement modular solutions which integrate with their existing stack.
Cloud is another casualty of this pragmatism. Cloud been an enduring trend since before the pandemic and many consider it to be standard technology in a modern stack. But the report confirmed other recent surveys, including from the IABM, that there is pushback against the idea that everything can and should be run from the cloud.
There are concerns over the cost of cloud, particularly where parts of the supply chain have not been optimized for deployment, the report finds.
Other concerns lie in the readiness of cloud solutions, that certain parts of the supply chain simply work better on-premise. This is particularly true of concerns relating to latency in live playout.
Some buyers still have security concerns about the cloud, “which means that their stack will remain on-prem for the time to come,” the report predicts.
“Vendors will have to prove that cloud native solutions are capable and reliable, if not better than on-premise deployments to sway buyers who may have these and other concerns.”
Buyers are looking for hybrid solutions. Generally, if it makes sense to do something in the cloud versus on-premise, then that is the approach buyers will take.
The Economy of SaaS
Here, SaaS-based platforms are considered to be a “transformative trend” allowing buyers to have flexibility in their architecture, but also ongoing support and incremental improvements to service.
There is a concern, however, over the lack of support given by some vendors to their customers. “Like with traditional licensing models, a one-off sales approach is no longer sufficient. Buyers have an expectation that support will be continuous and that products will continue to roll out new features over time.”
There is also a perception that the industry has stopped innovating. Particularly with the shift towards SaaS, buyers are able to change suppliers more easily than ever before. Per the report, this means that there’s a lower tolerance for lack of innovation on the buyer side, and less certainty around buying cycles on the vendor side.
“This is a dangerous place for industry vendors to be,” judges Caretta.
Broadly speaking, difficult economic conditions have impacted both buyers and vendors leaving most prioritizing existing revenue and streamlining their operations to do more with less.
Per the survey, 75% of vendors and buyers are seeing the need to tighten belts and 30% have had a hiring freeze, which compounds the widespread feeling of being under-resourced.
Caretta’s conclusion: “Buyers are seeking efficiency when deploying new technology in their stacks and are taking a pragmatic approach to new services, only investing in those which deliver value to audiences.”
Generative AI Interest
Generative AI is identified as the most transformative technology by both the survey and buyer focus group, but most are still not yet clear on how they will use it.
There are some early use cases in news editing and metadata for example, however the true potential of generative AI is still under consideration.
“There is a healthy amount of skepticism towards GenAI, but most see it as an opportunity despite reservations,” Caretta concludes.
Disappointingly it seems that sustainability is not yet having a significant impact on buying decisions, the report finds, although it is becoming a consideration for parts of the supply chain where vendor products and services are similar in terms of feature and price.
Trade Show Value
Of particular interest to trade show organizations like IBC and NAB is that in-person meetings are still considered valuable, with the trade show itself among the very best places to do business.
“Buyers consider industry events as one of their most important sources of information, and vendors consider it their most important channel for promoting their products to buyers.”
Yet half of buyers and vendors in the survey group have scaled back on investment in events since the pandemic and only 5% of vendors have increased their investment.
“Manufacturers may be left with a conundrum of how to get in front of new customers if investment in events by buyers continues to decline. Fewer buyer attendees will make it harder to get sales people in front of prospective customers.”
In 2024, AI applications and algorithms that can optimize data, perform complex tasks, and make decisions with human-like accuracy will be used in diverse ways, the study finds.
October 29, 2023
Yes, It’s Time to Think/Talk About Technology in 2024
TL;DR
Gartner dives into 10 predictions for the future that represent opportunities or threats.
Digital charisma filters are going to make us all individually better, according to analysts.
By 2027 a quarter of Fortune 500 companies will actively recruit neurodiverse talent across conditions like autism, ADHD, dyslexia to improve business performance.
Generative AI will be a new machine-to human-interface and a new and increasingly important machine-to-machine interface.
“In 20 years, when we look back, we are going to think that this is the year that everything changed,” says Gartner analyst Leigh McMullen. “I don’t know if any of us feel like that future’s too futuristic anymore. I don’t think it feels like science fiction.”
Generative AI is going to make us all individually better, according to a new future trends report by Gartner. The report was unveiled by McMullen at the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo in a session entitled “Strategic Predictions for 2024 & Beyond: The Year Everything Changed,” that you can watch in full above.
“With generative AI we have the ability to let individuals profit from innovations and technology, free up time, become better at what they do, maybe even spend a little bit more time with their families,” McMullen said. “Generative AI has the ability to help us write better it has the ability to help us engage with our customers more intimately. It has the ability to make us more charismatic.”
The latter might seem odd but Gartner is actually predicting that by 2026 30% of workers will leverage digital “charisma filters” to achieve previously unattainable advances in their careers.
Which begs the question: What’s a charisma filter?
McMullen explains, “We’re talking about the ability to increase your presence in the spoken word, increase your presence in the written word, increase your presence in your organization, virtually.”
We’re already seeing technology from organizations like NVIDIA that will adjust your eyelines so you’re always looking right down the barrel of the camera and that will skinny you up or make you look a little bit prettier.
“Digital charisma filters are going to help us in our organizations achieve new sorts of personal heights that will help us achieve new levels of personal performance.”
It’s also going to become an indicator of national performance.
The analyst thinks that the productivity value of AI will be recognized as a primary indicator of national power. It’s not farfetched given that we already use indicators of productivity GDP and organizational productivity as a source of power by making it a national benchmark.
“By making it something that we report on as nations this will cause greater investment it will speed this transformation into a world where we all prosper.”
By 2027, a quarter of Fortune 500 companies will actively recruit neurodiverse talent across conditions like autism, ADHD and dyslexia to improve business performance.
“Neurodiversity and cognitive diversity are superpowers for organizations. When you have cognitively diverse people, they see problems in different ways. They see opportunities in different ways. And they will create different ways to engage with each other, to engage with customers, to engage with citizens, to engage with fellow employees to unlock new sources of value,” says McMullen.
“This is not about giving some group of people special privileges,” McMullen stresses, “It’s not about shifting privilege around. It’s about creating an environment where we can all take our masks off, and be our authentic selves at work. And the value that that is going to unlock is tremendous.”
Another prediction: By 2028, there will be more smart robots than frontline workers in manufacturing, retail and logistics.
Since COVID, we’ve already seen more and more jobs replaced by machines. Just think of your local supermarket check-out.
Gartner thinks it is realistic to start imagining that by 2028 robots might start out in the workforce, not just in a highly-advanced supply chain but “everywhere across our ecosystem.” Indeed, we need to start thinking about generative AI as a new user interface.
“Whether that interfaces at a terminal that I’m talking to, or whether that interface is in a robot that’s making my coffee for me, it’s going to become a new user interface.”
Generative AI will be a new machine-to-human interface and a new and increasingly important machine-to-machine interface.
By 2026, 30% of large companies will have a dedicated business unit, or sales channels to access fast growing machine customer markets, Gartner predicts.
When it comes to threats and risks, Gartner predicts that “mal-information” is going to become a multi front threat by 2028, by which time the enterprise will be spending $30 billion a year trying to combat it. What is mal-information? The analyst describes this term as “algorithmically groomed and targeted disinformation or even the truth which is out of context and designed to change mental models.”
Today, mal-information is a $78 billion threat, which is just “people to people mal-information.” AI-based mal-information “will cause your AI to have a hallucination or cause it to ingest data that causes it to hallucinate. And that has the potential to grow to enormous sums.”
McMullen concludes with a call to action. “I’m imploring you to take the decisions that you make today and into the future about generative AI very, very seriously because we are literally the last generation of managers who get to make those decisions,” he says.
After those decisions are made it will become a one-way door, “which will become very, very difficult to reverse.”
In 2024, AI applications and algorithms that can optimize data, perform complex tasks, and make decisions with human-like accuracy will be used in diverse ways, the study finds.
October 30, 2023
Posted
October 29, 2023
Peter Csathy: It’s Time to “Generate” Your AI Game Plan
Futurist Peter Csathy says the WGA has been smart to agree to a time limit of three years in its new pact with the studios. This will allow the guild to survey the changing landscape and determine if contracts need to be updated.
Csathy thinks there are “compelling opportunities” for all players in the Media & Entertainment industry to leverage the power of AI, provided you do your homework and “Get a game plan.”
When it comes to AI, for futurist Peter Csathy, you have to get real: “I understand the fear, but we can’t put our heads in the sand. We need to look at things stoically.”
Csathy is considered a leading expert in Media & Entertainment and in particular where M&E meets future tech. In a new presentation, that you can watch below, he shares his thoughts on the current state of play of generative AI in the overall creative economy, highlights “compelling opportunities” to leverage its power for all players in the entertainment industry, and assesses the sobering risks it poses to artists within the entertainment ecosystem.
“I’m certainly no engineer, but I understand [tech] pretty deeply and I’m not afraid of it,” he says. “But with AI and with all new technologies, we need to be stoic about it, understand not only the possibilities, but also the risks and the impacts on life as we know it today and on the industry that we love so much.”
AI may be a mainstream topic in Hollywood, he says, but it is the Big Tech companies that will make the most money and have most control and power.
“Let’s look at the realities of economics. Big Tech has multitrillion-dollar valuations. Whereas the biggest media company out there, a traditional media company, which is Disney, has $150 billion market valuation. Ultimately, Big Tech is the big winner here. And I would say that Big Tech is the big winner on the backs of creators, artists, musicians.”
Certainly, creators, artists and musicians can learn to leverage AI for their benefit, but ultimately, “the scale of it all really inures to the benefit of Big Tech.”
That said, not even the CEOs of Microsoft, Google or Amazon know precisely how the sausage is made. “They don’t know precisely how a work is created [by generative AI]. They know generally how it’s created but they don’t know precisely how the ultimate output is achieved, when it comes to the black box of generative AI and the inputs that we put into it. Even the smartest minds developing the technology don’t know exactly how it does what it does, or where it’s going to be going.”
While that spreads inevitable confusion, uncertainty and fear, Csathy cautions that Media & Entertainment companies historically tend to “put their heads in the sand.” Ignoring AI is not a sound business strategy.
He advises CEOs to think about what Pixar did to traditional animation. “Before Pixar, Disney artists would be hand-framed, drawing each picture. Now, there’s a beautiful art to that. But imagine the length of time it takes to realize the vision of the film, while Pixar came in with computer generated animation and really disrupted and transformed the industry. Now, for some, it was not welcome because it disrupted their job as traditional animators but, on the flip side, it created an entirely new industry with new jobs,” he explains.
“I don’t want to minimize the human pain of that,” he adds. “It’s akin to what happened with factories on automation.”
Csathy suggests that governments are not equipped to create guardrails or regulation on AI, due to a lack of understanding and “demographic imbalances” in Congress. However, the biggest guardrail for Media & Entertainment companies using generative AI is existing copyright legislation, which in the US prohibits AI-generated works from receiving protection.
“While it’s daunting, just because it creates entirely new creative words doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s cannibalistic. I certainly believe that humans love engaging with cool content and experiences. There may be some cannibalizing because we have limited time in a day, but nonetheless, if I liked this AI generated work, I still may like the song I was listening to that is not AI generated. They’re not mutually exclusive.”
He imagines likeness and voice licensing opportunities for actors like Tom Cruise (“So you can imagine a case where Tom Cruise Mission Impossible 20 is in production, and Tom Cruise is on a beach sipping his margaritas,” while, the script, the actors, etc., are auto-generated) but this doesn’t address the fears of the 99% of talent without Cruise’s star power.
Of course, SAG has yet to agree terms with the studios, with AI royalties being a sticking point. Csathy says the WGA has been smart to agree to a time limit of three years in its new pact with the studios. This will allow the guild to survey the changing landscape and determine if contracts need to be updated.
“You have to learn to understand the language of AI, all of you no matter what role you play in the ecosystem of creativity, M&E, or technology. So you get it yourself. So you can speak the vernacular. So you have credibility. So you can work with other people and collaborate with them. It’s very important and follow developments closely,” he concludes.
“You got to create your game plan. Like I said, you can’t fear AI. This is the reality. This is where we are. Stoicism is key.”
The disruptive force of AI could be as transformative to democratic institutions as the printing press, argues policy expert Samuel Hammond.
October 30, 2023
Posted
October 17, 2023
Evan Shapiro: We “Need a Holistic CTV Strategy”
Join Evan Shapiro at NAB Show New York for the session “The Televisioning of FAST,” held Wednesday, October 25 at 11:45 a.m.
Shapiro dives into TV’s hottest topic, FAST, through a conversation with Justin Evans, Global Head of Analytics & Insights for Samsung Ads. Together they will delve into insights on what FAST needs to do to mature and grow into its full potential.
graphic courtesy of Evan Shapiro
FAST is now both incredibly popular and immensely disjointed, even “more fragmented than cable TV used to be,” writes Evan Shapiro.
He nods to an nScreenMedia reports that two-thirds of American viewers now report watching FAST channels, with the caveat that the average FAST channel garnered approximately two minutes of viewing time monthly (according to data from 2021). That’s perhaps less surprising when you consider that there are more than 1,000 FAST channels in the US alone.
And they continue to proliferate in numbers and in share of viewing time. Per Nielsen, Roku, Tubi and Pluto totaled 3.4% of all TV viewing in July and 3.3% of TV viewing in August.
graphic courtesy of Evan Shapiro
FAST revenue is also projected to explode; Omdia forecasts it reaching $11 billion by 2028 (again, in the US alone), a 208% increase over a five-year period. The researcher sees these US numbers as on the low end, with Mexico’s revenue growing by about 400% over the same period and topping off in Australia at 565%; Canada and the UK are expected to have increases more similar to the US, at 300% and 250%, respectively.
Shapiro cautions against misinterpreting the reason behind this growth (and looking at it without context). After all, it wasn’t long ago that SVOD was king and media watchers believed a hatred for ads was the raison d’être for Netflix.
“What consumers actually hated was the over-priced, inflexible cable bundle oligarchy, not linear TV, nor even the ads,” Shapiro writes. “Viewers (even younger audiences) want choice. They want a steady flow of stuff to watch. Their first (second, third, and fourth) priority is the relevancy and depth of the content they get, not the format, nor the ad load.”
graphic courtesy of Evan Shapiro
In terms of the numbers, remember that, Shapiro writes, “in Ampere Analysis’ projection for worldwide Media revenues, [FAST and AVOD’s] 2027 total comes to approximately 25% of ‘normal’ TV advertising, less than 40% of online display ads, and a tiny fraction of social and search advertising.”
While at first blush, this may seem counterintuitive, Shapiro points out that “FAST publishers must split all their revenues with the FAST platforms, and inversely, the platforms must split their ad sales with the channel providers.”
To get around the slicing and dicing, “many of the bigger FAST platforms are cutting back on voluminous channel offerings, and moving their marbles to channels they own and operate themselves” — AKA what Pluto pioneered.
In terms of content, that means “Gone are the days of launching dozens of channels full of repurposed YouTube videos every quarter. Today, the name of the game is quality over quality, and Distinction over ubiquity,” Shapiro writes.
He predicts that 2024 FAST will feature “professional, recurring, utility programming that emulates the best parts of traditional cable TV.”
That especially makes sense given consumers’ viewpoint:They “see FAST, AVOD, SVOD, vMVPDs, and YouTube not as separate things, but as one, big smorgasbord of video content on their CTVs that they control with the touch of a button or the swipe of a thumb.”
graphic courtesy of Evan Shapiro
In addition to programming changes, Shapiro thinks “FAST platforms must find more ways to make money than just ads. Hence Roku jumping into commerce. CTV tech allows for way, WAY more user-friendly commerce than we’re doing.”
Shapiro also advocates for “unified CTV strategy that treats their YouTube and FAST channels as two parallel lanes on the same TV highway, much as we used to see DirecTV and Comcast,” unless, of course, you’re getting paid for exclusivity rights. After all, YouTube is FAST’s biggest direct competitor.
To be adequately nimble, Shapiro says, “programmers need a holistic CTV strategy” because “consumers see media as a continuum, not a set of binary choices.”
Reducing production times and costs, virtual news anchors allow for the delivery of around-the-clock video programming in up to 30 languages.
He says the technology is not suitable in every case and not yet advanced enough to move from pre-recorded packages into live — but that’s definitely on the horizon.
Virtual humans are an emerging phenomenon likely to be increasingly used by filmmakers on-screen and widespread in hospitality and retail scenarios but perhaps alarmingly beginning to creep into broadcast news and journalism.
The first such virtual humanoid news anchor in the US, Raxana, was unveiled earlier this year as a lead host of DeFiance Daily, a program on streaming channel DeFiance.tv.
Marc Scarpa, founder and CEO of parent company DeFiance Media, is headed to NAB Show New York to share his experiences in creating Raxana and why he is optimistic for the future of broadcast news created and presented using AI tools.
Scarpa will provide his insights in a fireside chat with StoryTech’s Lori H. Schwartz entitled “AI Virtual Humans in Broadcast News.” During the session, Scarpa “will share the benefits of leveraging AI, along with human expertise.” Also, learn how DeFiance Media built a bespoke virtual studio for around-the-clock broadcast news.
“We are not here to destroy journalism; we are here to empower it,” he tells NAB Amplify. “At the end of the day, news producers will still need a workflow that involves humans. Virtual humans are just a device to communicate what those broadcast journalist stories may be.”
Scarpa predicts that virtual humans will become pervasive across all sorts of storytelling genres. “You are seeing it in social media. You will see it in healthcare and education, in other areas of entertainment, and broadcast journalism will not be immune,” he says.
Part of his argument for AI is simple cost efficiency: Local news in the US, as in other parts of the world such as the UK, has been challenged for some time in terms of operating costs. While local news remains an FCC mandate, its continued existence is in contention because of changing business models.
Scarpa says he is a big believer in the value of local news broadcast as a staple of information and culture, but the economics have to change.
“Broadcasters have to find new ways to monetize local news. They’ve not veered from the same business model for the last half century. They have attempted to reduce costs in terms of basic infrastructure in studios and control rooms and now there’s shift in terms of talent from an on-camera presence to virtual humans.”
This could be to the benefit of already stretched on-air talent, suggests Scarpa, since their likeness can be cloned into a digital representation of them.
“This would allow for the ability for known personalities to deliver more news packages without having to physically be there to shoot them and therefore generate more revenue for themselves. It would be a residual (royalty) module that runs on a blockchain.”
Scarpa is putting his theory into practice at DeFiance.tv, a television and digital network reporting on the alternative economy — meaning Web3, AI, VR, and digital asset developments.
Creating and Casting Raxana
During his fireside chat at NAB Show New York, Scarpa will share lessons learned in the course of creating Raxana. DeFiance originally worked with an out-of-the-box solution from Israeli developer Hour One but decided to customize one for their purpose.
“Hour One have fantastic technology, in particular for business-to-business applications, such as virtual humans for customer service, but it was not quite the storytelling device we needed for news. We realized that we needed a virtual human who is representative of our brand and who could communicate well with our audience.”
Instead, DeFiance used Hour One’s templates to create a bespoke virtual human based on an existing news anchor already employed by the network.
“What is most important is you can go and start with a stock character which is something that we did, but ultimately, we chose to create our own. That was a huge shift. Our engagement increased. The resonance with our brand really changed,” he said.
“There is old saying, ‘you have a face for radio,’ which means something intangible about your ability to connect with listeners,” Scarpa says. “I believe there is something similar about people who have an on-camera presence. I am not sure of the science behind it, but some people are able to communicate better than others in front of a camera. That art can be replicated, starting by recording motion capture of the person and delivering their virtual likeness on screen.
“We cast Raxana — based on a real person — to represent this Eurasian human, which studies predict that most humans will have this similar genetic mix in future. In essence, Raxana is the most intelligent journalist that can read a teleprompter in the world, but she is not going to be doing Barbara Walters interviews anytime soon.”
He continues, “How we use virtual humans is very rudimentary and basic at this stage. We are not using it to substitute for investigative journalism or a talk show format. The tech is not there yet, but it will [be]. I have seen AI virtual companion software that is outstanding.”
However, DeFinance is using AI across the news production workflow, not just in presentation.
“We use AI for fact checking and scripting and research and generation of video. We’re utilizing a variety of AI tech in our workflow to deliver factual accurate news packages,” Scarpa says.
Other AI Anchors
While the technology is cutting-edge, Scarpa is not the first to implement it.
In 2018, Chinese News agency Xinhua News unveiled an AI news anchor. A year later, it launched a female AI news anchor, “Xin Xiaomeng,” also developed by Chinese tech firm Sogu, whose voice and image were clones of a reporter named Qu Meng, a news anchor at Xinhua’s New Media Center.
In April this year, Kuwait News introduced “Fedha,” an AI news anchor on Twitter, as a test of its potential to offer new content.
The New Face of News?
Would an artificial news anchor weaken and destroy any faith we have left in broadcast news as a source of trusted information?
Scarpa replies by arguing that Walter Cronkie was the most trusted face of news in history — but that there was still an organization of broadcast journalists behind the camera.
“There are different types of broadcasters. Some are investigative, some report sports or the weather. All the rest of the hosts on our platform are humans who present traditional TV news shows, doing their own independent research and giving their opinions,” he says.
“Raxana’s function is very specific. She is not able to do much, but she is able to do enough for what we want her deliver and to able to package that news up at scale.
“For example, we can create and broadcast a news bulletin every two hours and take that package and auto-translate it into 30 languages. That’s an economy of scale that only AI can achieve. At the same time, we’re getting across information about the new economy out to as many people as possible. That is our focus and that is why Raxana works for us.”
However, live broadcasts are not yet possible. Scarpa says, “If I have a live camera covering the Senate hearings, then I would not feel comfortable having that fed into an AI for real-time commentary as human anchors and journalists do with authority today, but anything pre-taped can work in that manner.”
That said, Scarpa imagines weather presentation to evolve to virtual humans “fairly soon” with some forms of sports commentary to follow — although, again, not where there’s any live interaction between a virtual sports presenter and an athlete, human news anchor or pundit.
“We are not there yet with live. I’ve seen it working and seen you can do it, but it’s not ready for primetime.”
Get in on key trends and powerful intel at NAB Show New York’s Insight Theater! This is where you can catch up and connect the dots. Between process and products. Between the ways we now create and consume content. This is an intimate space to glean coveted insight and interact with the people and products transforming the industry.
At the same time, however, AI tools are often seen as a springboard to next-level human creativity. Technologies such as Anthropic’s chatbot Claude and OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Dall-E 3 offer a seductive creative experience.
Will these tools help us survive and thrive as a creative species? Or are they the death knell of creativity as we know it?
What is Creativity?
In her book The Creative Mind, cognitive science expert Margaret Boden distinguishes between two types of human creativity.
Psychological or personal (p-type) creativity happens when an individual thinks something for the first time — even if others have thought it separately before. One example is a child realizing water can take any shape.
Essentially, p-type creativity is learning something useful and, in the process, synchronizing our thoughts with others.
Historical creativity (h-type), on the other hand, happens when an individual thinks something that has never been thought before. One example would be Archimedes’s “eureka” moment in the bath, which supposedly led to him discovering the law of buoyancy.
The more someone’s creativity subsequently affects other people’s thinking, the more momentous and enduring we consider their legacy.
This is why Wandjina rock art in the Kimberley, Homer’s Iliad, Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater house and Albert Einstein’s Annus Mirabilis papers are all considered exceptional works left behind by exceptional humans. They are important because they continue to shape our thinking.
Generative AI Doesn’t Belong in Either Category
AI obviously has the potential to promote both p-type and h-type creativity. It can lead us to insights about biology, history and mathematics, and help us create texts and images that may be useful or thought-provoking.
But there is one key difference between human creativity and AI-driven creativity: the latter doesn’t stem from the evolutionary clash of mind and world.
AI models don’t contain reality. They rely on the complex statistical abstraction of digital data. This limits their real-world creative significance and their capacity to produce “eureka” moments.
To differentiate AI-driven creativity from old-fashioned creativity, I have proposed a new term: generic, or g-type, creativity. It formalizes the fact that while AI models are capable of provoking new thought, they are limited by the underlying data they have been trained on.
The Big Risk: A Generic Spiral
We can expect an explosion in g-type creativity in our future. The danger here is that our increasing use of AI could make us think too much alike, leading to a decrease in cognitive diversity and an increase in cultural tightness.
In this scenario, societies would become more rigid in the norms they enforce, and less tolerant of deviations from the status quo. At a population level this would be a creativity killer.
The threat isn’t just AI-generated movies, TV, books and art. In the future, the homes we live in, the cars we drive (or won’t have to drive) and our shared public spaces will all be shaped by AI. We may see our thinking become homogenized under the pressure of increasingly similar environments and experiences.
This sameness further put us at risk of a generic spiral. AI models are trained on content we create. So the more we use AI for g-type creativity, the more generic our content will become — and since this will be used to further train AI, the more generic AI outputs will become.
While this might be useful for certain specialist tasks — such as consistently interpreting law — it’s worrying to contemplate the kind of Orwellian political economy a generic spiral might give rise to.
Can We Enjoy AI and Also Preserve Creativity?
Balancing and reconciling human creativity with AI isn’t as simple as going for regular walks in nature — although that will probably help.
Generative AI may well be a transformative technology to rival the printing press or steam engine. Such juggernauts are difficult to resist; we collectively get swept up in the change, uncertainty and alienation they foment.
Some of the best minds of our generation are already abandoning other pursuits to try their luck at building and using advanced AI models.
Our best chance to remain truly creative is to protect and privilege the human over the artificial. Intellectual property law is key. Any further moves towards legal personhood for AI — such as allowing AI a “fair use” right to train itself on copyrighted material, or have copyright applied to AI outputs — will erode our creative system and risk a generic spiral in human creativity.
The winner of the “Empire State of Mind” photo competition will be unveiled during the session, receiving a cash prize of $4,000. Contestants can enter via the official contest website.
The session will reveal new storytelling techniques blending photos, videos and narratives, and provide insights into leveraging social media tools and content monetization strategies.
Urbom underscores the vital role of personal branding in today’s Media & Entertainment industry, describing the Bamboo platform as a unique space for creators to evolve their online presence and personal brands.
In a world where digital innovation shapes our daily lives, the fusion of technology and visual creativity has never been more apparent. As artists and creators harness the power of modern technology to craft compelling narratives, they also embrace a sense of personal branding, reflecting the values and complexities of our time.
Experience this exciting convergence at NAB Show New York, where Bamboo founder and CEO Nick Urbom will announce the winner and present a fascinating case study featuring the participants of the “Empire State of Mind” competition.
“Empire State of Mind presented by Bamboo” is seeking the next great photographer and their creative collaborators to shoot an exclusive creator merch drop. The twist is, the creator will be taking to the streets of NYC for an epic fan-meets-creator photoshoot. On Bamboo, creators will build a collaborative feed with their team to showcase their artistic style. They can include their chosen collaborators to present their creative, photographic approach to fashion on the streets of New York. The winner will get to lead the merch shoot for the renowned creator, Avori Henderson, and be tagged in the final post by Avori. The exciting journey will be documented and shared on the Bamboo platform and social media. The winner of the competition will receive a cash prize of $4,000 to help fund their creative journey.
The “Empire State of Mind: A Photo Competition Review” session at NAB Show New York will demonstrate new storytelling techniques, allowing attendees to discover innovative ways to blend visual mediums. The session will also cover social media tools, providing concrete practices for leveraging photos and videos for social media channels, as well as strategies for content monetization and winning methods for crowd-sourcing photo/video projects.
Urbom, the visionary behind Bamboo, has developed and produced a number of cutting-edge experiences for creators to advance their careers, including tech platforms, professional conferences and awards shows. He was the Co-Founder, CEO and Chairman of Infinity Festival Hollywood, and has co-founded three world-renowned trade organizations: the International 3D Society, the Advanced Imaging Society, and the VR Society.
He views the Bamboo platform as a space where creators can evolve with their presence online. “One of the major benefits of our platform is that you can create collaborative feeds on any topic,” he explains.
“So if you’re currently a drummer, and then you join a band, and then you later start a business in your career, like I did, you might have a feed on your personal music, and then you might also add a feed on the band. Then you might add a feed on what you’re doing with business, and you might add another feed on what you’re doing with the record industry now that you know some professionals in the music business — whatever it might be — so you can actually evolve over time as a personal brand.”
This evolution of personal branding, as Urbom describes it, is emblematic of a broader shift in the Creator Economy and the wider Media & Entertainment industry at large. In an era where individuality and authenticity are highly valued, the development of a personal brand has become a vital aspect of a creator’s journey. It’s not just about showcasing skills or talents; it’s about weaving a cohesive narrative that resonates with an audience, reflects one’s unique perspective, and adapts to the ever-changing landscape of creativity and innovation.
Bamboo’s unique approach to collaborative posting and monetization is a game-changer for creators. “What we noticed, what was missing in essence, was that there’s no way to collaborate on shared topics, and curate who can post into that space and who can see it,” Urbom recounts of the platform’s inception.
“Maybe you want to put a paywall in front of it, and maybe you want to put a product in there that you want to sell,” he continues. “And so we just started listening to all these ideas and testing features out with our platform. We got feedback from users on what they were looking to have available to them as tools, and that is what has now resulted in Bamboo, the social platform for collaboration and monetization. The “Empire State of Mind” competition, with its focus on creative collaboration and innovative storytelling techniques, is an opportunity to continue learning directly from creators about their evolving needs.”
Don’t miss this exciting opportunity to be part of the creative revolution and turbocharge your personal brand. Join Urbom and register today for NAB Show New York to discover new storytelling techniques and opportunities for monetization, and learn how to maximize your content and brand.
So what is the Photo+Video Lab? It’s a space where the worlds of photo and video converge, where image-based, still photography fuses with motion capture, where you find the inspiration to try something new.
It’s a space to connect — not only with the end-to-end workflow for your craft, but with your community. Content creators. Photographers. Videographers. And so many others… through photo walks, meetups, Q&A sessions, demos, exhibits, workshops and more. View the full schedule of events here.
Dive into a full-on immersion into the photo and video world with an integrated workflow experience that will allow you to sample the latest tech and gear side-by-side from iconic brands and innovative newcomers.
Held Oct. 26, the conference is for photographers and online video creators who want to build their businesses and expand their skillsets.
September 17, 2023
Strange New Worlds: Evan Shapiro Expands His Search for the Media Universe
TL;DR
Evan Shapiro has debuted a new kind of media map: the Global Media Ecosystem, which illustrates where both audiences and economies are gravitating, rather than only focusing on the market cap of individual companies.
Spoiler alert: mobile video and gaming have really come into their own, and media companies need to start integrating this type of content into their portfolio to most effectively leverage their IP.
Shapiro offers seven suggestions for thriving in the year 2023. All require an understanding of the current landscape and changing tastes of younger demographics and emerging markets. Still, his way forward sounds remarkably common sense.
Evan Shapiro’s latest map of the media universe has a new look. (And if you think that the resemblance to old-school video games is coincidental, you’re fooling yourself.)
Shapiro’s map of the 2023 Global Media Ecosystem is scaled according to the size of communities. This newly retooled version reflects a different way of thinking.
Per Shapiro, this version “refocuses our view around the audiences and economics at the foundation of our Global Media Ecosystem.”
In Amsterdam, Shapiro told an IBC audience, “This map is meant to be specifically a graphical representation of how most media consumers across the planet look at our media ecosystem right now.”
What’s New and Notable?
What can we learn from Shapiro’s latest map (crafted from Ampere Analytics data)?
Vive le mobile révolution! About half of all mobile usage (cellular data, not time) consists of video, and half of all video content watched on mobile is YouTube, reports Michael Burns for IBC365.
Additionally, the gaming sector is not just fun and games. Brands are now raking in $94 billion worth of in-game revenue annually. Burns notes that this is more than AVOD and FAST advertising represents. (Also, this is probably why the new map looks the way it does. Only Evan can confirm or deny.)
So who’s playing their cards right? Shapiro says Sony, the New York Times, and Amazon are all making smart bets and diversifying their portfolio in ways that anticipated where the market’s headed.
He told Burns, “Sony plays across that ecosystem incredibly well,” he said. “They’re in gaming. They’re in TV. They have a huge audio business. They have one of the best niche subscriber products in the world in Crunchyroll and Funimation. They’re in hardware that touches all of these things. It’s a multifaceted company.”
Some may be surprised he counts NYT as a winner, but Shapiro points out that this legacy media company “has a strategy for this entire map. It does gaming, social, audio, news, cooking and sports and all these different things. It’s a model for transformation for traditional media in this new age.” Shapiro thinks its “digital content bundle” even comes close to rivaling Amazon!
Speaking of which. He notes, Amazon’s Prime Video will host “a live shopping event at the halftime of the Jets-Dolphins game on Black Friday in the United States.”
He told IBC attendees, “Both (the New York Times and Amazon] are right now multifaceted, personalized lifestyle bundles that power a constant state of evolution around the needs of their customers. Two very different companies; one that inspired the new era that we’ve already begun, and the other that had to reinvent itself to compete ably inside this era.”
On the big tech side, Shapiro shouts out Apple and Google: “
Apple helped drive us to this moment and to this user centric era. And they are beyond well armed to battle for their place atop it with an arsenal of media services that goes along with their best in breed tech. Google starts this new era in pole positions across every segment of the media economy, video, social, audio and gaming. These and other tech giants are readying themselves to use their enormous resources to battle for control of the hearts and the minds and the money represented on this map. But they cannot and they will not run this ecosystem by themselves.”
Oh, and about YouTube? Shapiro says Google’s video platform relies on traditional media to survive. He tells Burns, “Without the Public Service Broadcasters and the local content creators, YouTube would be a wasteland, no one would ever go there. Yes, it has to have MrBeast, but it also has to have local creators and news. Increasingly that’s where people are going. YouTube is the biggest channel on television, in the UK, in Italy, and Germany. Why? Because you can get stuff from all around the world but also you can get news from around the corner.”
How can companies wrap their head around all this change? Shapiro suggests, “The fastest way to get there is [diversifying] age and class and race and gender. But you can find old white dudes like Mark Thompson (ex-BBC DG, ex-New York Times CEO, and now CEO of CNN) who think differently, you just have to know where to look for them.”
Just keep in mind that Shapiro would likely chide you, sharply, if you don’t take a closer look at the Global Media Ecosystem (September 2023) graphic, too.
That’s because he knows that people tend to view these maps as predictive, but they’re actually made in real time. As he told his Substack subscribers, “This map is not a warning. It’s a weather report.”
“Everything that’s happened in the media ecosystem [since 2020] has only proved the thesis that much more,” Shapiro told attendees at his IBC2023 keynote.
Surviving the Media Apocalypse
Shapiro insists that he’s an optimist (repeatedly) and even offers a survival kit for media companies that want to thrive in this era of change.
There are seven ingredients Shapiro thinks we need to succeed in 2023 and beyond:
Understand that IP is the hub of the wheel, which means that video, audio, social, and gaming are all spokes and not separate categories any more.
You don’t have to choose between subscription-based or ad-based models anymore.
Look outside of North America if you want to grow your footprint. Africa in particular has a lot of potential for investment.
You need Silicon Valley, and Silicon Valley needs your content.
Create and maintain relationships with your audience, and don’t let another company be the gatekeeper.
Consumers are buying content, which makes it a product. Invest in something worth paying for.
New ideas require new kinds of people, and you need to understand the users you hope to gain and retain. That means sourcing leaders who don’t think and look and act like you.
Media cartographer and industry observer Evan Shapiro is set to deliver the keynote address at NAB Show New York. Known as media’s official Unofficial Cartographer for his visual charting of the industry’s continual evolution, Shapiro’s speech will center on “What’s Next” for Media & Entertainment. He’ll use this keynote to lay out what to expect in the next era of media, whether we’re ready for it or not.
Attendees can look forward to new research and insights, as well as Shapiro’s honest assessment of how the M&E industry can grapple with its next era. Preceded by remarks from NAB President and CEO Curtis LeGeyt, this keynote session is scheduled for Wednesday, October 25, at 10:30 a.m. on the Insight Theater stage.
Media universe cartographer Evan Shapiro charts a course through the current media apocalypse towards rebuilding the industry.
September 5, 2023
AI Scores in the Top Percentile of Creative Thinking (No, Seriously)
BY ERIK GUZIK, UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA
Of all the forms of human intellect that one might expect artificial intelligence to emulate, few people would likely place creativity at the top of their list. Creativity is wonderfully mysterious — and frustratingly fleeting. It defines us as human beings — and seemingly defies the cold logic that lies behind the silicon curtain of machines.
Yet, the use of AI for creative endeavors is now growing.
New AI tools like DALL-E and Midjourney are increasingly part of creative production, and some have started to win awards for their creative output. The growing impact is both social and economic — as just one example, the potential of AI to generate new, creative content is a defining flashpoint behind the Hollywood writers strike.
And if our recent study into the striking originality of AI is any indication, the emergence of AI-based creativity — along with examples of both its promise and peril — is likely just beginning.
A Blend of Novelty and Utiliy
When people are at their most creative, they’re responding to a need, goal or problem by generating something new — a product or solution that didn’t previously exist.
In this sense, creativity is an act of combining existing resources — ideas, materials, knowledge — in a novel way that’s useful or gratifying. Quite often, the result of creative thinking is also surprising, leading to something that the creator did not — and perhaps could not — foresee.
It might involve an invention, an unexpected punchline to a joke or a groundbreaking theory in physics. It might be a unique arrangement of notes, tempo, sounds and lyrics that results in a new song.
So, as a researcher of creative thinking, I immediately noticed something interesting about the content generated by the latest versions of AI, including GPT-4.
When prompted with tasks requiring creative thinking, the novelty and usefulness of GPT-4’s output reminded me of the creative types of ideas submitted by students and colleagues I had worked with as a teacher and entrepreneur.
The ideas were different and surprising, yet relevant and useful. And, when required, quite imaginative.
Consider the following prompt offered to GPT-4: “Suppose all children became giants for one day out of the week. What would happen?” The ideas generated by GPT-4 touched on culture, economics, psychology, politics, interpersonal communication, transportation, recreation and much more — many surprising and unique in terms of the novel connections generated.
This combination of novelty and utility is difficult to pull off, as most scientists, artists, writers, musicians, poets, chefs, founders, engineers and academics can attest.
Yet AI seemed to be doing it — and doing it well.
Putting AI to the Test
With researchers in creativity and entrepreneurship Christian Byrge and Christian Gilde, I decided to put AI’s creative abilities to the test by having it take the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, or TTCT.
The TTCT prompts the test-taker to engage in the kinds of creativity required for real-life tasks: asking questions, how to be more resourceful or efficient, guessing cause and effect or improving a product. It might ask a test-taker to suggest ways to improve a children’s toy or imagine the consequences of a hypothetical situation, as the above example demonstrates.
The tests are not designed to measure historical creativity, which is what some researchers use to describe the transformative brilliance of figures like Mozart and Einstein. Rather, it assesses the general creative abilities of individuals, often referred to as psychological or personal creativity.
In addition to running the TTCT through GPT-4 eight times, we also administered the test to 24 of our undergraduate students.
All of the results were evaluated by trained reviewers at Scholastic Testing Service, a private testing company that provides scoring for the TTCT. They didn’t know in advance that some of the tests they’d be scoring had been completed by AI.
Since Scholastic Testing Service is a private company, it does not share its prompts with the public. This ensured that GPT-4 would not have been able to scrape the internet for past prompts and their responses. In addition, the company has a database of thousands of tests completed by college students and adults, providing a large, additional control group with which to compare AI scores.
Our results?
GPT-4 scored in the top 1% of test-takers for the originality of its ideas. From our research, we believe this marks one of the first examples of AI meeting or exceeding the human ability for original thinking.
In short, we believe that AI models like GPT-4 are capable of producing ideas that people see as unexpected, novel and unique. Other researchers are arriving at similar conclusions in their research of AI and creativity.
Yes, Creativity Can Be Evaluated
The emerging creative ability of AI is surprising for a number of reasons.
For one, many outside of the research community continue to believe that creativity cannot be defined, let alone scored. Yet products of human novelty and ingenuity have been prized — and bought and sold — for thousands of years. And creative work has been defined and scored in fields like psychology since at least the 1950s.
The person, product, process, press model of creativity, which researcher Mel Rhodes introduced in 1961, was an attempt to categorize the myriad ways in which creativity had been understood and evaluated until that point. Since then, the understanding of creativity has only grown.
Still others are surprised that the term “creativity” might be applied to nonhuman entities like computers. On this point, we tend to agree with cognitive scientist Margaret Boden, who has argued that the question of whether the term creativity should be applied to AI is a philosophical rather than scientific question.
AI’s Founders Foresaw its Creative Abilities
It’s worth noting that we studied only the output of AI in our research. We didn’t study its creative process, which is likely very different from human thinking processes, or the environment in which the ideas were generated. And had we defined creativity as requiring a human person, then we would have had to conclude, by definition, that AI cannot possibly be creative.
But regardless of the debate over definitions of creativity and the creative process, the products generated by the latest versions of AI are novel and useful. We believe this satisfies the definition of creativity that is now dominant in the fields of psychology and science.
Furthermore, the creative abilities of AI’s current iterations are not entirely unexpected.
In this same proposal, computer scientist Nathaniel Rochester revealed his motivation: “How can I make a machine which will exhibit originality in its solution of problems?”
Apparently, AI’s founders believed that creativity, including the originality of ideas, was among the specific forms of human intelligence that machines could emulate.
To me, the surprising creativity scores of GPT-4 and other AI models highlight a more pressing concern: Within U.S. schools, very few official programs and curricula have been implemented to date that specifically target human creativity and cultivate its development.
In this sense, the creative abilities now realized by AI may provide a “Sputnik moment” for educators and others interested in furthering human creative abilities, including those who see creativity as an essential condition of individual, social and economic growth.
Ride the wave and learn how to harness the power of AI for your creative processes! NAB Show and Future Media Conferences are teaming up to present the AI Creative Summit. This series of training events, sponsored by Dell Technologies and made possible by NVIDIA, is set to teach and empower the creative industry by demonstrating how artificial intelligence tools can amplify and streamline creative workflows.
The inaugural event, happening virtually September 14-15, is an online conference that offers an exclusive opportunity to engage with some of the industry’s leading trainers and experts from the comfort of your home or office for just $25. This will be followed by an in-person, two-day immersive experience that will take place in conjunction with NAB Show New York, running October 24-25 at the Javits Center.
Aimed at empowering creatives, the AI Creative Summit will be held at NAB Show New York Oct. 24-25.
August 7, 2023
Posted
August 7, 2023
Accelerating Innovation with Advertising Intelligence
Learn how organizations including Publicis, FreeWheel, TripleLift and Amazon Ads are using AWS cloud-based tools to accelerate time to market for predictive analytics workloads and analyze media for contextual signals to improve personalization.
So What Does Everyone Else Think About AI? (It’s the Beginning or the End or Both)
TL;DR
To find out what people really think about AI and what they want from it, The Verge teamed up with Vox Media’s Insights and Research team to poll more than 2,000 US adults.
The results tell the story of an emerging, uncertain, and exciting technology — where many have yet to use it, many are fearful of its potential, and many still have great hopes for what it could someday do for them.
One finding is particularly clear: AI is expanding what people can create and there is ambivalence about the ethics of copyright theft.
AI is out in the wild and being used most extensively for creative experiments, according to a new survey.
People are generating music and videos, creating stories, and tinkering with photos using free AI engines like ChatGPT.
Above all, people have simply been using AI systems to answer questions — suggesting chatbots like ChatGPT, Bing, and Bard may replace search engines, for better or worse.
The report, “Hope, Fear and AI,” from The Verge and Vox Media, polled 2,000 Americans about their attitudes to towards artificial intelligence.
One finding is particularly clear: AI is expanding what people can create. In every category polled, people who used AI said they used these systems to make something they couldn’t otherwise, with artwork being the most popular category within these creative fields.
“This makes sense given that AI image generators are much more advanced than tools that create audio or video,” note the survey authors.
There is general awareness of the ethical issues around AI and art, but less clarity about what to do about it. For example, most people think artists should get compensated when an AI tool clones their style, but a majority also don’t want these capabilities to be limited. Indeed, almost half of respondents said they’d tested the system by generating art in the style or voice of a writer, artist or other well known figure.
More than three-quarters of respondents agreed with the statement: “Regulations and laws need to be developed regarding the development of AI.”
These laws are currently in the works, with the EU AI Act working its way through final negotiations and the US recently holding hearings to develop its own legal framework.
The report highlights that there’s strong demand for higher standards in AI systems and disclosure of their use. Strong majorities are in favor of labeling AI-generated deepfakes, for example. But many principles with wide support would be difficult to enforce, including training AI language models on fact-checked data and banning deepfakes of people made without their consent.
The use of generative AI tools doesn’t stretch much beyond experimentation at this stage and in fact only one in three survey respondents have used them. When they do, brand recognition for ChatGPT is highest, though few people are familiar with the companies and startups behind the tools.
That said, people have high expectations for AI’s impact on the world — beyond those of other emergent technologies. Nearly three-quarters of respondents said AI will have a large or moderate impact on society. That’s compared to 69% for electric vehicles and a paltry 34% for NFTs.
More than 60% of survey participants predicted job losses as a result of AI and other societal dangers, including threats to privacy and government (ranked at 68%) and corporate misuse (67%).
Graphic courtesy of Vox Media
“These dangers are weighted more heavily than potential positive applications, like new medical treatments (51%) and economic empowerment (51%). And when asked how they feel about the potential impact on their personal and professional life and on society more generally, people are pretty evenly split between worried and excited. Most often, they’re both.”
Fifty-six percent of respondents think “people will develop emotional relationships with AI,” and roughly half expect that a sentient AI will emerge at some point in the future (two-thirds don’t have an issue with companies trying to make one).
Yet, nearly 40% think that AI will wipe out human civilization.
Perhaps that’s why more people are worried than not.
Evan Shapiro: What’s Changing (and Changed) in Media Consumption
TL;DR
Media cartographer Evan Shapiro delivered the closing keynote address at Streaming Media East, providing a close look at the latest consumer data in the global streaming marketplace.
It’s critical for stakeholders to understand shifts in demographics in the world’s population, Shapiro says, in order to identify untapped markets.
Younger generations are more likely to pay for services they want, he says, because they’ve been trained to do that since birth.
Shapiro predicts that the current advertising recession in the US will end in July, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the outlook is rosy.
Evan Shapiro loves to talk. And that’s a good thing, because his insights into the Media & Entertainment industry are invaluable, plotting the effects of disruption as the streaming universe changes its gravitational pull and reforms itself around new business models. The media cartographer and ESHAP CEO — known for his detailed maps and accompanying analysis charting the media universe — provided a close look at the latest consumer data at the Streaming Media East conference. You can watch the full session, “The Mind of the Modern Media Consumer,” in the video below.
Shapiro spoke about shifts in consumer demographics, how streaming is changing the television landscape, and survival tactics for an increasingly volatile ecosystem. He also predicted that the current advertising recession will end in July, with new data to back up that claim, and identified the biggest areas for growth.
“Constant disruption is now the operating system of our ecosystem,” Shapiro said in his opening remarks, noting that his job is to help stakeholders survive what he calls “the current media apocalypse.”
In a global marketplace, Shapiro said, it’s important to understand the demographic changes in the world’s population. “One of the things that you have to know is that the population on the planet Earth is completely different now from what it is when most of us were growing up,” he said, pointing out that 63% of the world’s population is now under the age of 40. “So If you’re over the age of 40, you’re in a minority for the first time in your life.”
But what’s even more critical to understand, says Shapiro, is how the demographics break down across regions: 33% of the world’s population is under 20, but that number changes drastically by region. In North America it’s 25%, and in Europe it’s 21%, but in Asia and Latin America that figure jumps to 32%, and in Africa it’s a whopping 51%.
“Half of the fastest growing economies on the face of the earth are in Africa,” he says. “So think about the world as you think about your business, look for opportunity outside of where you’re operating today.”
Shapiro also tackled misconceptions that younger consumers don’t want to pay for services. That’s “absolutely untrue,” he said, “The younger consumer is more apt to pay for services. They want to pay for media. We’ve raised three generations, the youngest generations, the largest generations, the most diverse generations on the planet, to pay for their media.”
He also pointed out that, according to surveys, the most important things to young subscribers are “relevant content, original content, refreshed content, and library size,” all of which are ranked as more important than cost.
Not thinking globally is a sure business-killer, Shapiro insists, using Roku as an example. “Roku is the number-one platform for streaming television on the planet Earth,” he said. “They’re not in the top five anywhere outside of the United States. So if you think about how to lose your business, focus only on America. And if you wanted to look at a good case study, look at Roku’s stock price over the last 24 months. Not a good story. Right? They moved far too late to go global, and it’s killing them right now.”
Companies like Samsung and Google, Shapiro said, are the new gatekeepers, and “in many cases, also your direct competitors.”
Samsung has already moved into publishing content, he said, noting that that streamers have to be included in the company’s home screen offerings to be considered a global publishing brand.
“Google is the direct competitor and an aggregator of yours. So this idea that we have these ‘frenemies’ I am now rebranding them — or trying to — into collaborators. You’re competing with them. And you also have to bear hug them, you don’t have a choice,” he continued.
“The idea that you’re going to be able to operate around these collaborators, specifically, Google is adorably naive, it’s just not possible. So you have to think about a way to both compete with them, and collaborate with them simultaneously.”
But what about that ad recession, you ask? Shapiro had plenty to say about that, along with some cold, hard data to back everything up. The upshot is that churn is the killer of advertising. “Serial churning is the new channel changing,” he said, and “when somebody cancels a subscription, not only do [streamers] lose that subscriber revenue, they also lose those ad impressions.”
In Q4 of last year, Shapiro noted, SVODs signed up 41.3 million new subscribers and lost another 33.8 million subscribers, an 82% loss. “That’s a shitty business, and, by the way, not great for advertisers,” he commented.
The US advertising market has experienced nine months of decline, Shapiro observed, but “bold prediction for you — the ad recession will end in July.”
Math, he says, has provided the answers. “The reason why we’re in an ad recession is primarily due to the comparison to the year prior,” he says, looking at ad revenue from the first quarter of 2022.
“It’s hard to keep that pace up,” he adds. “Now in July, the comparison is going to be a lot easier than it was a year ago. The ad recession is going to end magically in the middle of this summer, because math, and you’re going to hear about how advertising is back this fall.”
The outlook isn’t entirely rosy, however, Shapiro warns: “What’s going to happen though, is not all the ads are going to be shared equally amongst all the players. Because gravity sucks. Ads are going to go where the ads are most effective; ads are going to go where the ads are already working.”
The Mr. Beast Game Show, TikTok OH NO, and the Truth About Instagram Algorithms
BY JIM LOUDERBACK
TL;DR
Jimmy “Mr. Beast” Donaldson tweeted about his vision to produce a game show for traditional TV. Neat idea, and another step towards global media domination for one of the world’s great creators.
A nascent effort to bring creators together to collectively advocate is brewing – which I strongly support – but that’s not all. Top League of Legends players have also walked off the job.
TikTok joins Snap in developing an in-app AI chatbot. Part of Double-T’s push to replace search, this one’s called ‘Tako’. It could be a powerful addition. Or it might just make the focused short video app just a bit bulkier and more unfocused.
Although nearly 6 in 10 US adults have heard of ChatGPT, only 14% have actually used it, according to new research from Pew. That’s dramatically different from the creator universe, according to a new study from Epidemic Sound.
This Week: Mr. Beast wants to produce TV, collective action for the creator economy, weird new chatbots, algorithm insights from Adam Mosseri and why I think we’ve achieved peak research. Hi, I’m Jim and I helped build VidCon, OG-MCN Revision3, PC Magazine and TechTV. It’s the first week of Juneand here’s what you need to know.
Tic-Tac-Toe Uh-Oh: TikTok joins Snap in developing an in-app AI chatbot. Part of Double-T’s push to replace search, this one’s called ‘Tako’. It could be a powerful addition. Or it might just make the focused short video app just a bit bulkier and more unfocused. That name too! Quick, say it fast out loud three times – “TikTok Tako”. Yeah that’s what I thought as well. Maybe they’ll rebrand “Taco Tuesday” while they’re at it. Also, now you can send Snap’s chatbot a pic and get a snappy GenAI response. A qdp-fueled descent into debauchery will surely follow.
Trading on Creator Success? Imagine a stock fund focusing on creator-heavy businesses. Could it outperform the market? That’s the hypothesis of Conor Begley‘s latest stock index concept. First up – Lululemon – and more companies will be added soon. Alas, early returns are not great. But this is an idea worth testing.
🌟 UPDATE: Looks like Lululemon was up biggly Friday after releasing earnings. So, I guess this might be working after all!
AI Use Not Widespread: Although nearly 6 in 10 US adults have heard of ChatGPT, only 14% have actually used it, according to new research from Pew. That’s dramatically different from the creator universe, according to a new study from Epidemic Sound. After talking to 1,500 creators, they found that 93% of “monetizing creators” are using AI tools. And based on my discussions last week with a variety of exciting startups, even more super-useful tools incorporating AI are on the way. Paradoxically, though, AI as a promoted feature will fade away. Our tools will be laced with the stuff, thus becoming outrageously more capable. But like electricity, wireless internet, and video compression it will silently fade into the background. Where it belongs.
Peak Research Has Arrived: Another relatively self-serving creator economy study – this one from creator marketing platform Aspire, finds YouTube is the most profitable monetization platform and helps marketers price their partnerships. Along with Epidemic Sound’s study highlighted above, we may have reached peak research. Remember, aside from Pew, these studies are directional, not projectible.
Thanks for reading and see you around the internet. Send me a note with your feedback, or post in the comments! Feel free to share this with anyone you think might be interested, and if someone forwarded this to you, you can sign up and subscribe on LinkedIn for free here!
From predicting the probability of a catch in real time to forecasting ticket sales, tech is revolutionizing the business of sports. Learn how AWS is changing the game.
It can… but falls apart when asked to produce something truly new.
Is computational creativity possible? The recent hype around generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT, Midjourney, Dall-E and many others, raises new questions about whether creativity is a uniquely human skill. Some recent and remarkable milestones of generative AI foster this question:
An AI artwork, The Portrait of Edmond de Belamy, sold for $432,500, nearly 45 times its high estimate, by the auction house Christie’s in 2018. The artwork was created by a generative adversarial network that was fed a data set of 15,000 portraits covering six centuries.
Music producers such as Grammy-nominee Alex Da Kid, have collaborated with AI (in this case IBM’s Watson) to churn out hits and inform their creative process.
In the cases above, a human is still at the helm, curating the AI’s output according to their own vision and thereby retaining the authorship of the piece. Yet, AI image generator Dall-E, for example, can produce novel output on any theme you wish within seconds. Through diffusion, whereby huge datasets are scraped together to train the AI, generative AI tools can now transpose written phrases into novel pictures or improvise music in the style of any composer, devising new content that resembles the training data but isn’t identical. Authorship in this case is perhaps more complex. Is it the algorithm? The thousands of artists whose work has been scraped to produce the image? The prompter who successfully describes the style, reference, subject matter, lighting, point of view and even emotion evoked? To answer these questions, we must return to an age-old question.
What is Creativity?
According to Margaret Boden, there are three types of creativity: combinational, exploratory, and transformational creativity. Combinational creativity combines familiar ideas together. Exploratory creativity generates new ideas by exploring ‘structured conceptual spaces,’ that is, tweaking an accepted style of thinking by exploring its contents, boundaries and potential. Both of these types of creativity are not a million miles from generative AI’s algorithmic production of art; creating novel works in the same style as millions of others in the training data, a ‘synthetic creativity.’ Transformational creativity, however, means generating ideas beyond existing structures and styles to create something entirely original; this is at the heart of current debates around AI in terms of fair use and copyright – very much unchartered legal waters, so we will have to wait and see what the courts decide.
The key characteristic of AI’s creative processes is that the current computational creativity is systematic, not impulsive, as its human counterpart can often be. It is programmed to process information in a certain way to achieve particular results predictably, albeit in often unexpected ways. In fact, this is perhaps the most significant difference between artists and AI: while artists are self- and product-driven, AI is very much consumer-centric and market-driven — we only get the art we ask for, which is not perhaps, what we need.
So far, generative AI seems to work best with human partners and, perhaps then, the synthetic creativity of the AI is a catalyst to push our human creativity, augmenting human creativity rather than producing it. As is often the case, the hype around these tools as disruptive forces outstrips the reality. In fact, art history shows us that technology has rarely directly displaced humans from work they wanted to do. Think of the camera, for example, which was feared due to its power to put portrait painters out of business. What are the business implications for the use of synthetic creativity by AI, then?
Synthetic Art for Business
Synthetic creativity on demand, as currently generated by AI, is certainly a boon to business and marketing. Recent examples include:
AI-augmented fashion styling: Stitch Fix utilized AI to capture personalized visualizations of clothing based on requested customer preferences such as color, fabric and style.
The potential use scenarios are endless and what they require is another form of creativity: curation. AI has been known to ‘hallucinate’ — an industry term for spewing nonsense — and the decidedly human skill required is in sense-making, that is expressing concepts, ideas and truths, rather than just something that is pleasing to the senses. Curation is therefore needed to select and frame, or reframe, a unified and compelling vision.
Aimed at empowering creatives, the AI Creative Summit will be held at NAB Show New York Oct. 24-25.
June 12, 2023
Jim Louderback: Twitch Enrages Creators Again — Why Can’t they Learn? Plus the Dark Side of Baby Gronk and Good News for Shorts Creators!
BY JIM LOUDERBACK
TL;DR
Twitch has disastrously decided to prohibit burned in display and audio ads.
We’ve got more than everything you need to know about Baby Gronk, Baby Diggs and the NIL-spawn Livvy. I really hope we’re not seeing the next Honey Boo-Boo here, but in hindsight this should have been expected when NIL became legit.
We’re five months into the Shorts monetization chapter, and it’s mostly atrocious. However, there’s a light.
This Week: Twitch turmoil, Baby Gronk, Shorts improvements, what Apple’s new headset means for creators, and much more! Hi, I’m Jim and I helped build VidCon, OG-MCN Revision3, PC Magazine and TechTV. It’s the 2nd week of Juneand here’s what you need to know.
Twitch Enrages Creators Again: Back in 2010, the YouTube network I ran – Revision3 – had a legal agreement that allowed us to run burned in sponsor ads on our videos (negotiated by the amazing Damon Berger). Other networks wanted to do the same, but YouTube wouldn’t let them. And then they put the legal screws on us to try to box us out too. Luckily common sense prevailed, and brand deals provide creators with much of their income. Most platforms encourage it. But instead of learning from history, Twitch decided to repeat it – to disastrous results. After the rapid roll-back, I assume this was more of a comms failure rather than an actual return to 2010, but the result was the same. It just added to the anomie and distrust creators already felt towards the platform. A suggestion: Maybe Twitch needs to pressure test these changes with a trusted creator council before launching. And if one already exists, a compositional change might be appropriate. Also note that simulcasting was banned, and partner agreements torn up – and those changes stay (HT Publish Press – happy anniversary!).
Here Comes Baby Gronk! Here’s more than everything you need to know about Baby Gronk, Baby Diggs and the NIL-spawn Livvy. I really hope we’re not seeing the next Honey Boo-Boo here, but in hindsight this should have been expected when NIL became legit. This unsettling interview with Baby Gronk’s Dad ($) reminds me of that night I spent on the couch with Mama June in 2013. 2023’s recipe for disaster: A “pretty good at this internet stuff” Dad with a 10-year-old “product”. Can’t we just let kids be kids?
There’s a Light in the Darkness? We’re five months into the Shorts monetization chapter, and it’s mostly atrocious. However, there’s a light (over at the Frankenstein place). It’s Premium, which is delivering 5x the percentage revenue of long-form, according to Matt Gielen. And it looks like YouTube is even more committed to having Shorts become an entry point for search, as Google’s DeepMind AI is now generating Shorts descriptions, promising to supercharge discoverability. But creators are still trying to figure out how it works. Matt Koval shares insight from his client work, where he mostly recommends putting Shorts on a separate channel from longer-form video. Perhaps there’s strength in the community here, as YouTube’s new#ShortsFriends initiative aims to connect creators to each other to jump-start growth. Hopefully the picture becomes clearer soon, so we can time warp back to when YouTube delivered meaningful revshare across all video formats.
How Apple’s Vision Pro Will Change the Creator Economy: Lots of digital ink spilled last week on an expensive tech product that won’t be available for a year. Ben Thompson’s take is worth reading, while most of the rest was either breathless adulation or predictable predictions of failure. I’m reminded of Bill Gates’ quote about how we overestimate short-term impact but underestimate the change 10 years later. Yes it’s pricey, but $3,500 is relatively cheap for an Apple category buster: upon release the first Mac cost $7,000 in 2022 dollars, while the Apple Lisa – perhaps a better comp – would cost $30,000 today. A few thoughts on how creators will evolve in the long term:
Headcasting from events will become popular as we teleport inside our favorite creator’s head at the Met Gala, Coachella, VidCon and other experiences.
Roblox creators find a lucrative new market for goods and experiences.
Superfan hangouts with creators become more intimate, personal, and engaging – and offer a new avenue for AI-based constructs to drive revenue.
Digital collectibles and badges take off (just don’t call them NFTs).
A new class of creators currently suffering through middle school will dominate the Tubefilter top 50 by 2033.
Don’t Kill the Golden Archive! Insatiable demand for AI training data brought down the Internet Archive – and has also indirectly led to Reddit and Twitter charging for API access too. You can witness the Reddit impact today, as a 48-hour Reddit blackout is underway. It’s the 2023 tragedy of the commons. Hopefully brewster kahle and team will figure out how to grant access without breaking the system – and maybe even make some money too. Let’s not inadvertently kill the things we love as we build the future.
Research Study of the Week: Most creators know about AI, while around 2/3rds are using it in some way, according to a new study from tools vendor Lightricks. Despite wide usage, the study also reported widespread concern about AI – from deepfakes to copyright infringement. The study also looks at monetization – which appears to be up for most creators. This study was executed by YouGov, so it’s likely more reliable than some of the others we’ve talked about. But the methodology is not well defined. Grade: B –Directional, not Predictive.
Where I’ll be: Going to VidCon? See you there – I’m hosting and moderating sessions on both the industry and creator track! Also check out my “how to VidCon video”, updated for 2023.
Thanks for reading and see you around the internet. Send me a note with your feedback, or post in the comments! Feel free to share this with anyone you think might be interested, and if someone forwarded this to you, you can sign up and subscribe on LinkedIn for free here!
What’s Behind the $100 Billion+ Creator Economy (Hint: It’s Not Creativity)
TL;DR
The Creator Economy comprises more than 200 million people globally, contributing to an industry expected to be worth over $100 billion by end of this year.
Creator-led brands have emerged as valuable partners for well-known companies, sports teams, leagues and other entities looking to expand their audience by tapping into the niche audiences of content creators.
Multi-language audio tracking represents an opportunity for creators to grow their reach. YouTube reported that dubbed videos made up approximately 15% of watch-time in a channel’s non-primary language.
The creator economy is maturing into an industry worth north of $104 billion globally by the end of 2023, according to data compiled in a new report.
There’s been a 314% increase in the number of people earning a living as creators worldwide, up from 50 million in 2021 to 207 million this year, per the “2023 Creator Economy Report” from The Influencer Marketing Factory.
This includes amateur creators whose number has almost tripled in size since 2021, while the demand for creator mentorship and monetization opportunities is “drastically increasing.”
Creator-led brands have emerged as valuable partners for well-known companies, sports teams, leagues, and other entities looking to expand their audience by tapping into the content creators’ niche audience.
“The industry is starting to recognize that creators are businesses,” says Sima Gandhi, Co-Founder, CEO of Creative Juice, one of a dozen industry execs quoted in the report. “We’ve seen that when creators leverage business and tax tools, they can make more, save more, and grow faster.”
TikTok and YouTube are the top favored and top earning platforms at a relatively even rate in 2023. For both TikTok and YouTube, 26% of creators say they are their favorite platforms and 26% say they earn the most on either platform.
The report supports other research that being a full time creator will net you a decent living but by no means one you can retire on. The majority of content creators interviewed for this report make between $50,000 and $100,000 per year. More than 75% of creators earning less than $20,000 annually have less than 150,000 followers.
The report suggests that this may be due to the fact that they are smaller creators just starting out in their creator careers, or they may use influencer marketing and user-generated content as a side hustle.
To start earning $1 million a year, creators will need more than five million followers. Even then, only 4.8% of creators interviewed with more than five million followers reported earning more than $1 million per year in 2023.
Avi Gandhi, Founder of Partner with Creators, points to the rise of the “grown up” creator.
“Ten years ago, when you said ‘creator,’ the mental image would be of a young teen or 20-something taking Instagram photos or making YouTube videos,” he says. “Then COVID-19 happened, and every gainfully employed adult in the world was sent home. Since then, hundreds of thousands of professional adults have augmented their incomes or gone full time as creators.”
Being a creator is no longer a young person’s game: “As tools, platforms, and services businesses have arisen to feed relatively new revenue models – like masterminds, coaching, courses and more — small audiences have started to yield large dollars.”
In addition, creators don’t need to appeal to the masses to make a living; they can carve out a niche and find people willing to pay for their content.
“Content creation isn’t just about creativity and entertainment anymore,” Ghandi adds. “Now, more than ever, it’s about utility.”
The report provides an overview of every notable social media platform and creator tool. For instance, it notes that multi-language audio tracking is now available for creators on YouTube.
YouTube reported that dubbed videos made up approximately 15% of watch-time in the channels’ non-primary language.
One of the world’s highest earning creators, Mr. Beast, tells the report that multi-language audio is extremely useful for creators like himself who have several subchannels for content translated to a different language in that their spread of content can be condensed to one main channel.
“You can imagine if you take twelve channels like those and instead of doing them all separate you combine them on one, it supercharges the heck out of the video,” says Mr. Beast.
This in turn makes it easier for global viewers to locate content and simply select their language dubbing preference from the video settings menu. Mr. Beast advises that creators dub their old content as well as their new content so that fans may binge watch your content.
“Just as word-of-mouth marketing has always been the most effective form of advertising, creators harness that power, but at scale,” Brendan Gahan, Partner & Chief Social Officer at Mekanism says in the report. “Individuals are the trusted media outlets.”
He goes onto argue that the relationship creators have with viewers isn’t so much a fan relationship but one more akin to friendship.
“Influencers form powerful, parasocial bonds with their audiences. It’s a one-to-many, scalable friendship. Celebrities may be recognized, but it’s creators who are truly loved and trusted by their communities.”
Jim Louderback: YouTube Algorithm Insider Explains What’s New, and Revelations from an Expert Model of the Creator Economy
BY JIM LOUDERBACK
TL;DR
YouTube algorithm chief Todd Beaupré explains how it really works in a must watch video for anyone building on YouTube.
OG creator Peter Hollens’ recent essay passionately explains why creators really do make the best social media managers.
Researchers from Cornell and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology just released an economic and quantitative model of the influencer economy to explain how it works and divulged some interesting conclusions.
This Week: New insights on audience satisfaction and content optimization from YouTube’s internal algorithm czar, copyright challenges for the video and AI age, and new academic research on the influencer economy. Also updates on the post-creator landscape, TikTok’s Creator Marketplace and much more. It’s the end of May and here’s what you need to know.
YouTube Algorithm Chief Explains How It Really Works: A must watch video for anyone building on YouTube featuring Todd Beaupré. Top insights include “don’t think algorithm, think audience”, and an exploration of how YouTube takes the long view via “satisfaction” – and how that complements watch time. He also shares how YouTube evaluates new creators and helps them find an audience and how to think about optimizing Shorts, podcasts, and long-form. Todd also expands what “satisfaction” really means in a LinkedIn comment. Love hearing from the source, more please YouTube! (Pro tip: YouTube lets you adjust playback speed. It’s even better at 1.5x).
From F* Pay Me to F* Hire Me: OG creator Peter Hollens 🟣 has been an advocate for creators nearly forever. One of Patreon’s first investors, he’s now focusing on the post-creator experience. And his recent essay passionately explains why creators really do make the best social media managers. And also why companies that hire creators build real competitive advantage. The article also lays out the thesis for his latest startup, but is worth reading beyond the self-promotion. Other examples are emerging too, including Too Faced’s new creative director Sara Echeagaray, Sophie Lightning’s stint at Nerf and now Made by Gather, and many more. But it’s not just another promotional avenue, as success creators can directly translate those skills to building success for you.
From Andy Warhol to YouTube Swatting: Copyright in the video/AI age is a vipers nest of contradictions. Our institutions – from government to top platforms – remain woefully behind the times, which creates minefields for creators and artists alike. First up, an awful story about how a vindictive creator uses YouTube’s creaky copyright strike system to attack competing creators. Hey Big Red, why is strike “swatting” still a thing? Next, the US Supreme Court narrowed fair use by slapping Condé Nast for its transformative interpretation of an Andy Warhol painting. Peter Csathy explains why this ruling could have huge implications for generative AI. Copyright needs to be reinvented for the AI and digital age – but we’ve known that for nearly 30 years.
Academics Discover the Creator Economy: When should creators demand reciprocal exclusivity during brand deal negotiations? Now there’s a scientific answer! Researchers from Cornell and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology just released an economic and quantitative model of the influencer economy to explain how it works and divulged some interesting conclusions. In addition to exclusivity optimization, they also predict when long-term hookups are better for both parties and much more. Read the dense and non-peer reviewed paper (or download my free GenAI summary sourced from ChatPDF, Bing and ChatGPT). And expect more academic scrutiny on Creator Econometrics in the months ahead. That’s a good thing.
The “Ad Recession” has definitely arrived, says Simon Owens – who suggests doubling down on subscriptions and other paid revenue. Unfortunately, it also means cutting back, layoffs and fire sales.
Li Jin explores the potential of the Lens Protocol, a creator-friendly open social graph that lets you keep your followers as you change social platforms.
AI ad reads could soon come to your Spotify podcasts.
Thanks for reading and see you around the internet. Send me a note with your feedback, or post in the comments! Feel free to share this with anyone you think might be interested, and if someone forwarded this to you, you can sign up and subscribe on LinkedIn for free here!
A comprehensive analysis of the creator economy by global VC firm Antler shows an industry in transition.
May 29, 2023
Traditional Media Companies Aren’t “Computable,” and That’s Where AI Actually Poses a Threat
TL;DR
A new report from studio-funded thinktank ETC, “AI & Competitive Advantage in Media,” authored by the org’s resident data scientist and AI expert, Yves Bergquist, explores the impact of generative AI on the media.
Bergquist argues that generative AI impacts the media industry less by disrupting its traditional content creation process and more by giving social content creators the tools to make large amounts of truly cinematic, studio-like content.
Social media’s strength is its enormous library of content, which allows it to conduct millions of content market-fit experiments per minute.
There’s still a place for deliberate, curated, data-driven development decisions about what audiences want to see, but studio-style content needs to be integrated and immersive.
The single biggest impact of generative AI for large content producers and distributors isn’t about disrupting the media-making process. It’s that it gives its fiercest competitors — content creators on YouTube and TikTok — more tools to eat further into everyone’s daily video consumption that the media industry is battling for.
According to a fresh report by studio-funded thinktank ETC, “AI and Competitive Advantage in Media,” generative AI “potentially disrupts the already unfortunate economics of the media business: stable demand (never more than 24 hours in a day) and exploding supply.”
In the report, Yves Bergquist, ETC’s resident data scientist and AI expert, argues that what’s happening in the media industry is proximate to what already happened in manufacturing: automation of the craft of making a product (i.e., making the product computable).
By computable they mean that content is produced in volume and is “machine readable” in terms of every aspect of its creation to distribution to feedback from audiences being data and therefore available for dissection
Traditional media companies currently are not “computable” in the sense that they produce products linearly, one at a time. It is scarce, whole, long-form (not conducive to being sliced and diced by an online audience) and unstructured (its narrative DNA is not yet machine-readable).
This is going to have to change if studios and streamers want to part of the bigger picture in a few years’ time.
ETC divides the creative process into three parts. Bergquist dubs the ideation part, where creatives “sense” what an audience wants to see, “zeitgeist intelligence.”
Then there’s the core of the creative process, where creatives define their voices and make strategic decisions about what product will be crafted.
Finally, the product is made.
AI’s immediate impact is on that final phase. But by automating production, “Generative AI not only puts more emphasis on Zeitgeist-sensing and creative decision-making, it gives creative decision-makers tools to quickly and cheaply tinker, experiment, and prototype.”
At the same time, traditional media companies “risk losing their monopoly on the craft of high-quality content.”
Generative AI empowers social creatives to quickly and cheaply craft “studio quality” content threatening the status of traditional media. They can do this because their knowledge of what the audience wants is crowdsources by links, likes and recommendation algorithms. The content produced is computable in the sense that it can all be digitally mined. And the scale of content production means there’s enough supply to fit cater for every audience whim.
But ETC spots a weakness. Social media platforms and content creators reliant on those platforms lack any real understanding of their audience, claims ETC. It is just “basic content match-making”.
Instead, studios and especially streamers, can strike back against pure AI content generators by using the data they have at their disposal more intelligently.
“Programmatic content distributors like TikTok match content with audiences without any semantic understanding of why this content resonates. It’s just a programmatic marketplace that computes the content de facto.”
With generative AI bringing high production value tools to social creators, we can expect a new category of “short-form linear content” to emerge on social platforms.
Studios, on the other hand, “have the longest experience and the largest dataset available to not only develop an intelligence go their audiences, but to draw them into a deep relationship with their franchises.”
Media organizations, “especially those with a streaming service,” have both the data and a unique capability to understand the cultural zeitgeist. They can use AI to better “know” what audiences want, Bergquist says.
ETC also suggests that it’s the large media organizations that have the financial backbone “to create highly integrated and replicable AI-driven virtual production workflows.”
It contends that traditional media players will need to differentiate through immersive, multi-platform, world-building franchises, a trend they are already pursuing of course.
This, says ETC, “is the greatest opportunity for large media organizations to leverage virtual production and generative AI together to quicken and cheapen the cost of producing these multi-format immersive pieces. This new form of computable content will run on game engines.”
In so doing, this “revolutionizes the way stories are told,” with integrated narratives spun across linear and immersive media products.
There are warnings, though.
“Media organizations don’t have a software culture, nor can they support large AI R&D assets. They could partner with (or acquire) key AI research organizations to leverage their data to create their own proprietary content and audience intelligence models, but this is a heavy lift.”
ETC also identifies a need for intuitive “human-ready” and “business-ready” interfaces for AI models, which continues to be the greatest bottleneck for AI in enterprise. Too often, says Bergquist, organizations can’t connect models and business needs.
“Whoever can redesign their organizations and workforce needs to best create a ‘culture’ of AI and data will move faster than its competitors.”
Education, insists ETC, is the largest opportunity in AI today.
While everyone seems to agree AI represents a big financial opportunity to automate some production and postproduction workflow it begs a question: Does taking knowledge of the craft out of creative work affect creative decisions and creative output overall? Or, put another way, does knowing the craft make a creative a better decision-maker? ETC has no answers for this, and perhaps we’ll only find out in time.
More globally, what the media industry needs right now is a distinct and actionable AI vision.
As Hollywood studios weigh the creative potential of artificial intelligence, AI could be the most important part of the WGA strike.
May 24, 2023
Posted
May 23, 2023
So What Do Audiences Think About the Use of AI in Hollywood?
TL;DR
A new report titled “Reading Between the [Picket] Lines” from global insights and strategy firm NRG reveals that streaming viewers largely support the WGA strike and are cautiously open to the use of AI in the entertainment industry.
The findings are based on a survey of 3,000 US consumers, aged 13-54, who subscribe to at least one streaming service and consume a minimum of four hours of streaming content per week.
While more than 60% of respondents are aware of the strike, only 13% feel they have a comprehensive understanding of the strike and its underlying reasons.
Among those who feel they understand “a lot” about the strike, a staggering 74% say that they support the WGA’s decision to strike.
When it comes to the role of generative AI in the entertainment industry, viewers are yet to fully make up their minds about where they stand, yet more than two-thirds expressed concern about the use of AI in Hollywood.
As the Writers Guild of America strike continues to unfold, a new report reveals that streaming viewers are both supportive of the writers but also cautiously open to the role of AI in the entertainment industry.
The report, “Reading Between the [Picket] Lines,” from global insights and strategy firm NRG, is based on a study of 3,000 US consumers ages 13-54 who subscribe to at least one streaming service and watch a minimum of four hours of streaming content per week.
While public understanding of the WGA strike remains low, the report found, there is already strong support for the writers. More than 60% of respondents indicated awareness of the strike, but only 13% said they understand “a lot” about the strike and the reasons behind it. However, among those who feel they understand “a lot” about the strike, a staggering 74% say that they support the WGA’s decision to strike. Forty-three percent of viewers say that they either “strongly” or “somewhat” support the decision to strike — more than three times the number who oppose the strike (13%).
As media coverage continues, it’s likely that sympathy for the WGA’s position will grow — especially in the early stages of the strike while studios still have content to release and most viewers don’t yet feel personally affected by the disruption to the industry. The most immediate impact of the strike has been the suspension of late-night shows; however, only 10% of streaming viewers say this is an issue that they personally care about.
Interestingly in these politically divided times, support for the strike appears to transcend political divisions. Consumers who self-identify as liberal are among the most likely to back the strike, with 57% in support and only 10% opposed; but even conservatives say they support the strike by a two-to-one margin (34% support vs. 16% oppose).
When it comes to the role of AI in the entertainment industry — one of the central issues at stake in the strike — viewers are yet to fully make up their minds about where they stand, yet more than two-thirds expressed concern about the use of AI in Hollywood.
“To me that’s an early warning sign of a potential backlash if studios are seen to be using AI specifically for the strike,” Katie Kelley, NRG’s executive vice president of content and strategy and a former vice president of market research at Paramount Pictures, told Lucas Manfredi at TheWrap.
“That would suggest that as the media coverage kind of continues, maybe builds around the strike and those motivations do become maybe a little bit clearer to consumers that they are able to make up their minds,” she continued. “It would suggest that as awareness builds, the same level of support will probably pan out in the long run.”
While there’s a contingent who are strongly opposed to the use of AI to write scripts, most viewers are willing to at least wait and see what AI-supported content looks like before deciding how to feel about it.
More than a quarter (28%) say they’d be less interested in watching a show if they found out it was written with the help of AI, while only 13% say that they would be more interested. Overall, however, a majority of viewers — nearly 6 in 10 — say it would have no impact on their willingness to watch a show. This suggests that, for the most part, consumers are still making up their minds about whether they want to lean in or out of AI-generated content.
Only 12% of those surveyed believe that studios should fully adopt AI to script content with minimal human intervention. In contrast, a third of the respondents (32%) advocate for a complete avoidance of AI in the entertainment industry. Interestingly, a significant 38% see a potential role for AI in the sector, but insist that its use should be responsible and guided by seasoned human screenwriters.
“When you add those together,” Kelly noted, “it means that more than two-thirds either want the industry to avoid using it or only use it under the discretion of humans. “I think that’s a compelling data point.”
For generative AI to successfully carve out a space for itself in the entertainment industry, it’s critical that viewers see it as a tool to support human screenwriters — not as threat to their livelihoods. If studios are seen as turning to AI to replace striking writers, this could create a strong public backlash against the technology, Kelly said.
“If studios are generally interested in exploring this new technology, I think they need to tread a little carefully during the strike period.”
YouTube released its “YouTube impact 2022” report, touting $35 Billion of US economic impact, 390,000 FTE (Full Time Equivalent) jobs in its “creative ecosystem” and over 55,000 US channels with more than 100,000 subscribers (according to Brendan Gahan, it mushrooms to 320k worldwide).
This Week: Updates from YouTube’s Brandcast and NFL Chief Roger Goodell’s surprise appearance, also new unskippable ads and AI for advertisers. Also, a look at the eye-popping “YouTube impact 2022” report, along with various topics related to creators, including new tools from Meta and the psychology of support. Also the decline of the modern internet webpage, the rise of AI replicated creators, TikTok’s Montana mess and developments in the world of NFTs. It’s the fourth week of May 2023 and here’s you need to know.
YouTube Brandcast Focuses on NFL, AI: Although creators were everywhere, NFL Chief Roger Goodell stole the show at YouTube’s advertiser party last week. Big Red spent billions to stream American football this fall, and they clearly need strong advertiser – and viewer – support to make money. Unskippable ads are coming too, which means more money for creators – hopefully – but more blowback from users. And following Meta’s lead, they also leaned into AI for advertisers. Quite the contrast to the dispirited upfronts from traditional TV platforms, reeling from the Hollywood writer’s strike. Creators don’t have a union (yet), thus their star power was prominently displayed. Alas, my invite got lost in the mail, so I can’t share any other fun Brandcast details. Attendees did walk away with a free Sunday Ticket subscription, which will cost regular folks nearly $500. If anyone has a free “Sunday Ticket” invite left over and wants to support this newsletter, send it my way – I’ll give you a shout-out here next week!
YouTube Impact Report 2022 Released: In a related story, YouTube released its “YouTube impact 2022” report, touting $35 Billion of US economic impact, 390,000 FTE (Full Time Equivalent) jobs in its “creative ecosystem” and over 55,000 US channels with more than 100,000 subscribers (according to Brendan Gahan, it mushrooms to 320k worldwide). Yes sub metrics are suspect, but still. Those are killer numbers. If YouTube were a country, their US GDP contribution alone would slot them in between Estonia and Senegal. For all the handwringing about TiKTok, Snap and Instagram, the report paints a picture of a dominant creative and economic force, and one that’s growing 15% or more annually. And unlike the studies we discussed last week, YouTube worked with a legit research firm, Oxford Economics, to conduct its surveys. Want to see what a real methodology statement looks like? Download the whole study and head to page 25. Finally, a study that’s projectible, not just directional.
Ad Blockers Steal from Creators: Do you use an ad-blocker on YouTube? If so, you’re not only docking YouTube, but you’re fleecing creators as well. YouTube is experimenting with blocking access to ad blockers as it tries to right the revenue picture. But because creators get a share of revenue, less ads served means less money for creators. Support your favorite creators. Watch ads on their channels. Otherwise, those creators might have to stop.
Why We Support Creators: There’s more you can do to support your favorite creators though beyond just watching ads – from tipping to buying merch. But why do we do it? It’s not altruism, says Derek Yang, but instead one (or more) of four primary motivators – from status to identity. Yang’s post dives deep into each of these, helping creators and brands refine their monetization strategy and motivate fan support.
Montana Bans TikTok:The proposed ban was signed into law. Although easy to circumvent, the precedent of a state banning TikTok will continue to tarnish Double-T while unleashing a torrent of lawsuits that will likely hit the Supreme Court eventually. First up – five Montana-based creators are suing for first amendment protection. In a related story, the Supreme Court continued to agree that internet platforms are not liable for the content they serve – and their moderation – by ruling for Twitter and dismissing a related case against YouTube. Will the Montana ban hold up? IANAL, so I asked my favorite creator lawyer (and CEO of Creators Legal) Eric Farber:
“Section 230 and the TikTok/Montana ban both deal with digital platform rights, but from different angles; while 230 focuses on user content liability, the TikTok ban brings up questions of national security, data privacy, and the practicalities of enforcing such a ban, all while raising significant constitutional concerns. It is unlikely the Montana ban will hold up on the federal level.”
New Facebook Tools for Creators: Facebook continues to lean into creators by adding new resources for creators to its “Professional Dashboard”. Good to see, but does anyone else think Meta’s creator resources are all over the place? There’s that dashboard, the Meta Business Suite, Adam Mosseri’s Instagram channel, Zuckerberg’s video site on Facebook, Facebook for Creators and much more. I’d love to see everything come together – maybe they need to take a “page” from Linktree?
“The PC revolution, the Internet revolution, and the AI revolution (can be) viewed as three applications of the defining economic feature of digitization — zero marginal costs — to information:
“The PC allowed for zero marginal duplication of information.
“The Internet allows for zero marginal distribution of information…
“AI is zero marginal generation of information.”
Thanks for reading and see you around the internet. Send me a note with your feedback, or post in the comments! Feel free to share this with anyone you think might be interested, and if someone forwarded this to you, you can sign up and subscribe on LinkedIn for free here!
A comprehensive analysis of the creator economy by global VC firm Antler shows an industry in transition.
May 21, 2023
Posted
May 16, 2023
Jim Louderback: Get Paid for Views, Not Ads; Meta’s Surprising New Strategy; and Influence Beats Work for Young Adults
BY JIM LOUDERBACK
TL;DR
Meta is taking an interesting approach to paying creators in a new Facebook Reels test. Rather than sharing revenue – as it did with prior tests, it plans on paying for views instead.
The latest IZEA influencer study is out – fielded in December 2022 via 1,200 U.S.-based consumers.
I’m a Creator and I Quit! The latest IZEA influencer study is out – fielded in December 2022 via 1,200 U.S.-based consumers. It found that 61% of 18-29 year-olds in the U.S. would quit their job if they could make a living as an influencer. The study also found that more than 1 in 5 (of that 18-29 group) already consider themselves an influencer. Almost half of those influencers have less than 1000 followers, while 56% are employed full-time.
40% of Users Tip Creators and Most Creators Make Over $50k a Year (say Wut?): IZEA competitor “The Influencer Marketing Factory” released an omnibus overview of the creator economy and research too. Their study talked to 1,000 U.S. users and 660 U.S. creators, and found that more than 40% of users tip, and more than 60% of content creators make over $50k a year. Clearly not a random sample. In addition, their data shows that a whopping 94% of creators have adopted AI into their workflow. There’s a lack of transparency about methodology in both Izea and TIMF’s study – and some of TIMF’s data seem way off base. Given Izea’s track record I find more veracity in their data – but take both as directional, not projectable.
Get Views and Get Paid: Meta is taking an interesting approach to paying creators in a new Facebook Reels test. Rather than sharing revenue – as it did with prior tests, it plans on paying for views instead. Meta will transition some creators into this new model and invite more creators to participate. Instagram will be added in select markets too. Somewhat like Spotter and Jellysmack’s model – where creators get paid today for expected future earnings regardless of platform sales or economic environment – the program aligns even better with a creator’s efforts. Creators don’t sell ads, but they do drive views.
As with most programs like this, success will hinge on revenue per view (RPV), what views are included and how many creators are part of the program. Hopefully it won’t mirror what creators have seen in TikTok’s pulse program, where CPVs range from $3-$20 CPV, but the number of revenue-generating views was abysmal – via Insider ($). I can imagine different RPVs by content type – perhaps beauty and cute animals are more highly valued by advertisers than pranks or DIY. A higher CPV in some categories might drive more creators into that space.
Drive views and get paid – perhaps THIS is the future of creator monetization.
I think there’s a great opportunity to build a “NALLM” – or Network Attached Large Language Model – that sits in your home or office and only includes your personal/corporate data and is protected from the broader internet. PrivateGPT gets us closer to my vision.
Great tips for creators and managers on how to optimize brand deal agreements – from Creators Legal founder (and rockstar entertainment lawyer) Eric Farber.
Thanks for reading and see you around the internet. Send me a note with your feedback, or post in the comments! Feel free to share this with anyone you think might be interested, and if someone forwarded this to you, you can sign up and subscribe on LinkedIn for free here!
A comprehensive analysis of the creator economy by global VC firm Antler shows an industry in transition.
May 9, 2023
Posted
May 9, 2023
What To Do If Your IP is Being Stolen By Generative AI
TL;DR
Though generative AI may be new to the market, existing lawshave significant implications for its use. Now courts are sortingout how the laws on the books should be applied.
In many cases it poses legalquestions that are still being resolved. For example, doescopyright, patent, and trademark infringement apply to AI creations?
Lawyers — who perhaps stand most to benefit from the muddied waters — offer advice tailored for creators, AI developers, and business users on what to do.
The meteoric rise of AI applications has left the industry wondering how this technology will interact with copyright law… and whether the law can keep up. This is largely uncharted territory, but here’s legal advice for the developers of AI tools and artists working with them.
There are two primary questions to consider about AI art. The first is, “Can AI art be copyrighted?” The other question surrounds the legal status of artists who claim to have had their art stolen (generously called “sampled”) to supply the data for AI diffusion models.
Thuan Tran, associate at Dunlap Bennett & Ludwig, answers the first question, stating that the US Copyright Office will reject a request to allow an AI to copyright a work of art. This is because it will not register works produced by a machine “or mere mechanical intervention” from a human author.
Courts interpreting the Copyright Act, including the Supreme Court, have consistently restricted copyright protection to “the fruits of intellectual labor” that “are founded in the creative powers of the [human] mind.”
However, this interpretation is being tested. In a case currently before the Supreme Court, artist Kris Kashtanova is contesting a decision by the Copyright Office not to register a copyright for graphic novel that she created using an AI.
Kashtanova is emphasizing in how she “engaged in a creative, iterative process” that involved multiple rounds of composition, selection, arrangement, cropping, and editing for each image in her work, which makes her the author of the work.
“While the outcome of the proceeding is not yet finalized and Kashtanova has a chance to appeal its decision, many are eagerly awaiting what may be very precedential for the future of AI art.”
The second question is also taken up by Tran, and is also being framed in the court of law. There are several cases of artists suing generative AI platforms for unauthorized use of their work
Image licensing service Getty, for example, has filed a suit against the creators of Stable Diffusion alleging the improper use of its photos, both violating copyright and trademark rights it has in its watermarked photograph collection.
The outcome of these cases is expected to hinge on the interpretation of the fair use doctrine. This is the legal concept that allows for the use of copyrighted material without permission from the copyright holder, in certain circumstances.
Tran explains that Fair use is determined on a case-by-case basis, and courts consider four factors: (1) the purpose and character of the use; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
“One argument in favor of AI-generated art falling under fair use is that the use of copyrighted material by AI algorithms is transformative,” he says. “Transformative use is a key factor in determining fair use. It refers to the creation of something new and original that is not merely a copy or imitation of the original work.”
AI algorithms create new works by processing and synthesizing existing works, resulting in a product that could be considered distinct from the original. “As a result, AI-generated art can be seen as a form of transformative use, which would weigh in favor of fair use,” Tran says. “On the other hand, this argument is not without its limitations. Many argue that AI-generated art is simply a recombination or manipulation of existing works, without adding significant creative output. “
There is also the larger philosophical debate as to whether a machine can give “creative input” to its work. In such cases, it may be more difficult to argue that the use of copyrighted material is transformative and subsequently falls under fair use.
All this uncertainty presents a slew of challenges for companies that use generative AI. There are risks regarding infringement — direct or unintentional — in contracts that are silent on generative AI usage by their vendors and customers.
“AI developers should ensure that they are in compliance with the law in regards to their acquisition of data being used to train their models,” advise Gil Appel, Assistant Professor of Marketing at the GW School of Business, Juliana Neelbauer, partner at law firm Fox Rothschild LLP, and David A. Schweidel, Professor of Marketing at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. “This should involve licensing and compensating those individuals who own the IP that developers seek to add to their training data, whether by licensing it or sharing in revenue generated by the AI tool.”
Developers should also work on ways to maintain the provenance of AI-generated content, which would increase transparency about the works included in the training data. This would include recording the platform that was used to develop the content, tracking of seed-data’s metadata, and tags to facilitate AI reporting, including the specific prompt that was used to create the content.
“Developing these audit trails would assure companies are prepared when customers start including demands for them in contracts as a form of insurance that the vendor’s works aren’t willfully, or unintentionally, derivative without authorization.
“Looking further into the future, insurance companies may require these reports in order to extend traditional insurance coverages to business users whose assets include AI-generated works.
Creators
When it comes individual content creators and brands, the onus is on them to take steps to protect their IP.
Stable Diffusion developer Stability.AI, for example, announced that artists will be able to opt out of the next generation of the image generator.
“But this puts the onus on content creators to actively protect their IP, rather than requiring the AI developers to secure the IP to the work prior to using it — and even when artists opt out, that decision will only be reflected in the next iteration of the platform. Instead, companies should require the creator’s opt-in rather opt-out.”
According to Appel, Neelbauer and Schweidel, this involves “proactively looking for their work in compiled datasets or large-scale data lakes, including visual elements such as logos and artwork and textual elements, such as image tags.”
Obviously, this could not be done manually through terabytes or petabytes of content data, but they think existing search tools “should allow the cost-effective automation of this task.”
Content creators are also advised to monitor digital and social channels for the appearance of works that may be derived from their own.
Longer term, content creators that have a sufficient library of their own IP on which to draw “may consider building their own datasets to train and mature AI platforms.”
The resulting generative AI models need not be trained from scratch but can build upon open-source generative AI that has used lawfully sourced content. This would enable content creators to produce content in the same style as their own work with an audit trail to their own data lake, or to license the use of such tools to interested parties with cleared title in both the AI’s training data and its outputs.
Customers
Customers of AI tools should ask providers whether their models were trained with any protected content, review the terms of service and privacy policies, “and avoid generative AI tools that cannot confirm that their training data is properly licensed from content creators or subject to open-source licenses with which the AI companies comply.”
Businesses
If a business user is aware that training data might include unlicensed works or that an AI can generate unauthorized derivative works not covered by fair use, a business could be on the hook for willful infringement, which can include damages up to $150,000 for each instance of knowing use.
Consequently, businesses should evaluate their transaction terms to write protections into contracts. As a starting point, they should demand terms of service from generative AI platforms that confirm proper licensure of the training data that feed their AI.
Appel, Neelbauer and Schweidel add that they understand the real threat of generative AI to part of the livelihood of members of the creative class, “at the same time both creatives and corporate interests have a dramatic opportunity to build portfolios of their works and branded materials, meta-tag them, and train their own generative-AI platforms that can produce authorized, proprietary, (paid-up or royalty-bearing) goods as sources of instant revenue streams.”
By keeping the interests of generative AI creator-users in mind, we can better arbitrate between what copyright should allow and prohibit.
May 9, 2023
The Separate Set Ups for XR, MR, and Virtual Production
TL;DR
A new white paper from graphics technology vendor Brainstorm examines the technologies that enable extended and virtual production, and the pros and cons of each approach.
It argues that scenes filmed in a volume using background plates on LED walls will be “baked” in if there are any issues requiring tinkering in post.
“We may have to re-shoot or enter in long and complex postproduction, meaning all the time and cost savings of virtual production disappear,” the paper says.
One of the biggest benefits of virtual production is the reduction of costs in actors’ time, props, setup, travel, and outdoor shooting time. But according to graphics technology vendor Brainstorm, scenes shot in a LED wall environment are fixed and can’t be changed later unless the scene is shot again.
In a white paper that details the various technology set-ups for virtual production, Brainstorm favors virtual production based on chromakeying.
It argues that scenes filmed in a volume using background plates on LED walls in part to light the scene will be “baked” in if there are any issues requiring tinkering in post.
“We may have to re-shoot or enter in long and complex postproduction, meaning all the time and cost savings of virtual production disappear,” it says.
“Using LED-based XR will still maintain some of these benefits, but at the cost of not being able to alter shots easily in post, so if we need changes in the scene, the background needs some adjustments, etc, we will still need to reshoot the scene.”
The paper continues, “Of course, rehearsals in live productions can help with these issues, however, some other changes may not be possible to make because of scheduling, availability or change of minds after production, so they will require going into postproduction.
“On the other hand, chroma keying, when used with tracked cameras and multilayer shooting, can perform any changes in post with total ease.”
For film and drama productions, shooting the background “as is” leads to a “significant loss in flexibility when postproduction is required”, such as compositing, VFX, environmental grading, particles, etc.”
As the image is “fixed” rotoscoping or other techniques may be required to isolate parts of the image prior to apply effects, “which makes no sense in complex productions, whereas using chroma keying will allow VFX operators to easily achieve all that is required, as the elements are already shot separately and stored independently.”
The use of LED walls and LED volumes — a major component of virtual production — can be traced directly back to the front- and rear-projection techniques common throughout much of the 20th century.
May 8, 2023
Jim Louderback: The TikTok-YouTube Ad Battle, Text Comes to AI Images, BlueSky and More
There was a time when I really wanted to get into Clubhouse. And then once I did get in, it quickly succumbed to the Yogi Berra effect.
TikTok is working on a special label for creators to flag whether their videos were AI generated. This is similar to disclosing video sponsors, but I’m less optimistic it will make a difference.
This Week: The latest developments in the short-form video space, where YouTube and TikTok are battling for your attention and money. Plus, a cool new tool that lets you create images with text using AI. Also, thoughts on BlueSky ascending and Clubhouse dropping. It’s the second week of Mayand here’s what you need to know.
Short Form Video Monetization Heats Up: The TikTok/YouTube war for creator hearts and minds is accelerating. YouTube added Shorts to its “Video Reach Campaigns”, which uses AI to help marketers place ads. Big Red also added a new Select option to Shorts ads as well. Both promise to increase Shorts revenue for creators. TikTok announced that its “Creativity Program Beta” is now available to all creators in the U.S. It’s still a fund, not revshare, and will likely not include meaningful payouts – even if they are bigger than the $.04 CPV creator Nicole Marks-Martinez sees today. But if you’re a premium publisher (read old media), TikTok has something new for you – an expansion of Pulse to give brands access to videos from “trusted partners”. In a related story, at least some creators are cashing in over at TikTok’s secret UGC video factory. Looks like TikTok wants to lean into brands and media companies rather than support digital-native creators, but we’ll see how it nets out.
Text Finally Comes to AI Image Generators: So far, it’s been easier to clone a Warhol or Monet than add text to AI-generated images. But now auto thumbnail generation at scale – with text, AB testing and much more – is almost here. Stability AI – parent of image gen tool Stable Diffusion – just released a beta from its partner Deep Floyd called “Deep Floyd IF”, which supports text along with image generation. It’s far from perfect – but offers a glimpse into a fully automated future, one that’s much closer than ever. I created a handful of fun “Inside the Creator Economy” images, but only about 20% were usable. Some of the fails were super intriguing (look for those in the post comments). Give it a try here and post your best images in the comments below.
Skeeting and Tweeting in the Clubhouse: There was a time when I really wanted to get into Clubhouse. And then once I did get in, it quickly succumbed to the Yogi Berra effect: “no one goes there anymore, it’s too crowded”. And now with Clubhouse laying off half its staff, streamed voice-only events seem as quaint as N95 masks, PCR tests and buckets of hand-sanitizer. Now I’m outside the BlueSky velvet ropes, which the cool kids flash-mobbed last week. Yogi Berra’s coming for BlueSky too – but he’s also coming for all the big social platforms. Just as lemony fresh imaginary friends won’t save Snap, BlueSky’s new hotness won’t last. Another templated social network – at least to me – seems as antiquated as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.
Sorting Out Deep Fakes: TikTok is working on a special label for creators to flag whether their videos were AI generated. This is similar to disclosing video sponsors, but I’m less optimistic it will make a difference. The technology will likely outpace efforts to rein it in – and it’s unlikely that unprincipled creators will flag their videos this way. Platforms will likely engage in an ultimately fruitless “whack a mole” effort focused on labelling, demonetizing or deleting AI-generated videos. I posted a crazy sci-fi solution to authenticate human-generated video, but in the end I forecast a return to authenticity and the continued rise of IRL creator experiences.
QUIBIS:
Snap launches its own Creator Marketplace called the “Snap Star Collab Studio”. Try saying that three times fast.
After 22 time-zones in two weeks, I share my top tips for beating jetlag.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “Viral Traffic Was Always Garbage” – Brian Morrisey in his awesome newsletter The Rebooting.
Thanks for reading and see you around the internet. Send me a note with your feedback, or post in the comments! Feel free to share this with anyone you think might be interested, and if someone forwarded this to you, you can sign up and subscribe on LinkedIn for free here!
The Broadcast and Media (B&M) technology market was worth $67 billion in 2021 as the industry continues to rebound from COVID. The market will grow between now and 2026 at 1.6% a year, according to the latest annual survey by the IABM (The International Trade Association for the Broadcast & Media Industry) and research company Caretta Research.
Much of the decline in 2020 and the subsequent rebound in 2021 was driven by the production and post-production services industries as the creation of new content was postponed until after the worst phase of the pandemic.
Many areas of the industry are expected grow at closer to 3-5% CAGR, such as technology used in the production of content. For instance, the report expects rapid adoption of camera-to-cloud tools despite lack of a common interchange format between vendors. Remote collaboration and IP intercom systems are prime examples of the “enormous improvements” to efficiency forced into being across the industry by COVID.
PTZ cameras with more sophisticated optics and automation are being increasingly used for a vast array of events. PTZs with AI, for instance, are being used to assist in flagging and referee reviews of off-sides in sports. Distributing more live feeds from an event is now becoming a requirement yet “there is no prevailing format, metadata or rights management for this presently,” notes the report.
Most concern in the IABM report is placed around the shift to cloud.
“The words ‘cloud’ or ‘the cloud’ raise many different thoughts, prejudices and different meanings among our peers,” writes Lorenzo Zanni, lead research analyst at IABM. “To some, cloud is playout, others distributed computing, and yet some only think of this as offsite public storage within our industry.”
The vision of running everything in an off-prem cloud — whether public or private — still has limitations, the IABM finds. These limitations are typically overcome by using hybrid solutions, and sometimes even by including dedicated hardware. The trend towards object storage is clear, which means this scalable solution is quickly becoming a commodity. However widespread lack of understanding about cloud and cloud economics “has mid-size companies hesitant due to cost models and lack of fully scalable storage across various platforms.”
Uncertainties also remain over the understanding of public cloud security, meaning not so much concern about hackers stealing content but more about users having the know-how to configure security.
Overall, though, whether the cloud is public, private or hybrid, the IABM finds the infrastructure continuing to move away from dedicated hardware to more virtualized edge computing.
Although AI/ML are considered mature for closed captioning, script and data generation, AI is not widely used yet for QC and surveillance of networks. The use of AI for creating short-form advertising is underway. In sports AI is being used for player and ball tracking, off-side calls, and sound mixing.
“AI chatbots must be factored into new workflows especially on the creative side,” says Zanni. “AI video creation platforms are bleeding edge and many are finding this fascinating yet not ready for prime use yet.”
The creation of deepfakes with the assistance of AI is a worry, the IABM says, citing the use of Respeecher by sound editors without first securing permission from talent.
“ML systems leveraging complex language models will continue to improve interactive chat, and automated creation of editorial content, but also SPAM, Phishing and other security threats, including the building and drop of malicious code.”
LED wall virtual production using game engines for volumetric productions is no longer considered bleeding-edge according to this study, with traditional studios quickly adopting XR within their sets and production.
There are no recent dramatic breakthroughs in image sensors with momentum towards 8K slowed due to the COVID hiatus.
Media companies must learn, understand and respect the video game world, the IABM advises, as this will help them to quickly gain newer viewers, which in turn will give them the all important brand recognition within an interactive space.
Sustainability is starting to move beyond “nice to have” toward becoming a requirement. Companies that are merely greenwashing are being called out, and hard facts are becoming a requirement as carbon footprints are becoming part of the RFP process, along with surcharges, though “there is little balance yet between the costs of sustainability vs. profits.”
Despite already exceeding their budgets in 2022, the majority of organizations will spend more on expanding cloud storage capacity in 2023.
April 30, 2023
Posted
April 26, 2023
NAB Show Names 2023 Product of the Year Award Winners
TL;DR
NAB Show named the winners of the fifth annual Product of the Year Awards during a live awards ceremony April 18 at the 2023 NAB Show in Las Vegas.
Winners were selected by a panel of industry experts across 15 categories, including three Best Overall Awards in the categories of Create, Connect and Capitalize.
To be eligible, companies had to nominate products they were exhibiting at NAB Show. The products also had to be available for delivery within the 2023 calendar year.
The announcement came during a live awards ceremony April 18 at the 2023 NAB Show in Las Vegas.
A panel of industry experts selected winners in 15 categories, including three Best Overall Awards in the categories of Create, Connect and Capitalize. To be eligible, companies had to nominate products they were exhibiting at NAB Show. The products also had to be available for delivery within the 2023 calendar year.
“Every year, NAB Show is excited to see what new, innovative breakthroughs our nominees have made to transform how content is created, connected and capitalized throughout the media and entertainment industry,” said Eric Trabb, senior vice president and chief customer success officer at NAB. “The winners of the 2023 Product of the Year Awards have demonstrated how they can help storytellers face the challenges of the present and future by revolutionizing the content lifecycle at all its stages.”
This year’s winners are:
CREATE CATEGORY
Audio Production, Processing and Networking
Audio Design Desk, Inc
Audio Design Desk 2.0
Calrec Audio
Argo
Clear-Com
Arcadia with HelixNet Integration
DanAds
Audio Ad Creation
Dotterel Technologies Limited
Konos
Cameras
ARRI
ARRI ALEXA 35
DJI
DJI Ronin 4D and the DJI Inspire 3
FUJIFILM North America Corporation
FUJIFILM X-H2 Mirrorless Digital Camera
Insta360
Insta360 ONE RS 1-Inch 360 Edition
Sony
FR7
Camera Support, Control and Accessories
Angenieux
Optimo Primes IOP
Atlas Lens Co.
Mercury Series
Canon
Canon Flex Zoom lenses – CN-E14-35mm T1.7 L S/SP wide-angle zoom lens and the CN-E31.5-95mm T1.7 L S/SP telephoto zoom lens
AI is considered an essential new tool in the progress towards future video compression technologies, but the next few years will be dominated by the transition to existing standards, including AV1 and VVC, according to a new InterDigital and Futuresource Consulting report.
“The Evolution of Compression in a Video-First Economy” outlines the development path of video compression codecs that have proven to be critical in reducing bandwidth and improving efficiency in the delivery of the data dense video services.
The report restates the case that video dominates internet traffic today, with more than 3.5 billion internet users streaming or downloading some form of video at least once per month and that, with applications for video expanding, state-of-the-art codecs are needed to not only reduce storage and bandwidth but also use energy more sustainably.
Spotlight on VVC
Unsurprisingly given its own stake in the development and licensing, InterDigital makes much of Versatile Video Coding (VVC/H.266) as the standout video codec that will take over much of the work from existing lead standard HEVC.
Based on research by codec specialist Bitmovin, H.264/AVC continues to be a popular choice for live and offline encoding, but InterDigital thinks this is likely to be overtaken by both H.265/HEVC and AOM AV1 within the next two years.
The VVC (H.266) is based on H.265/HEVC and offers up to a 50% bit rate reduction.
Alongside InterDigital, major semiconductor companies including Qualcomm, Broadcom and MediaTek are among the largest contributors of intellectual property into the VVC standard. They will integrate into Android smartphone chipsets, helping to drive VVC adoption into mobile. More widely, hardware decoders are under development to provide support for VVC on TVs, STBs and PCs.
Chinese technology giants Alibaba and Tencent each have their own versions of VVC codec (S266v2 and TenCent266, respectively).
NHK and Spin Digital are also developing real-time software VVC decoders to support UHD live streaming and broadcast applications.
Therefore, InterDigital believes, VVC is likely to become the favored codec as UHD services proliferate with expectations that it will be universally accepted and used from 2026 onward.
However, it says, “VVC may not replace H.264/AVC and H.265/HEVC entirely, but instead the industry is likely to advocate the coexistence of multiple codecs during the transition.”
Looking further ahead though and codecs like VVC, HEVC and AV1 will likely be superseded by technologies based on neural networks.
“The days of static, block-based codecs may be coming to an end,” InterDigital notes. “Traditional coding techniques use hard-coded algorithms and, although these are entirely appropriate for saving bandwidth, their advancement is still based on traditional heuristics.
“New coding methods, notably those exploiting the power of AI, are poised to supplant current wisdom within the next five years.”
Enter AI
Machine learning techniques are being researched by the major video standards organizations worldwide. The MPEG JVET Adhoc Group 11 is working on NNVC (Neural Network Video Coding) in an attempt to create an AI-based codec before the end of the decade.
The paper explains that there are three primary areas of focus: dynamic frame rate encoding, dynamic resolution encoding, and layering.
In dynamic frame rate encoding, the AI aims to encode video at the minimum frame rates necessary to encapsulate the content without sacrificing quality. News broadcasts might be encoded at 30fps, whereas live sports content benefits from 60fps.
“Using ML to train AI to identify the type of content, it is possible to significantly reduce the encode compute requirements, approaching a 30% reduction overall for content with limited movement between frames.”
Dynamic resolution encoding extends existing compression techniques that streaming content providers employ today. Here, the resolution-bit-rate choices are determined on a scene-by-scene basis to optimize file storage requirements and streaming bandwidth using encode ladders. Using AI, however, would remove the requirement for encode ladders.
“Replacing this ‘brute force’ approach not only reduces computation, but also helps improve sustainability by banishing unnecessary energy usage,” says InterDigital.
This applies to offline encoding as well. Netflix, for instance, has been using AI to avoid exhaustive encodes of all the parameter combinations, with neural based methods discovering the optimum selection to reduce file sizes.
The third AI focus on layering is aimed at delivering higher-resolution content. Using scalable techniques, UHD videos are encoded using a base layer at HD resolution along with an enhancement layer that conveys the extra data required to reconstruct UHD frames. HD-only receivers ignore the enhancement data, whereas a 4K-capable product uses the additional layer to decode and reconstruct the entire video stream.
AI-derived methods are also likely to extend beyond these traditional techniques. For example, AI could reconstruct video using low-resolution reference images alongside metadata describing the context, “delivering a credible approximation to the original video with a significant reduction in bandwidth.”
While ML and AI have a place in helping define current and future video coding, InterDigital says that the industry isn’t about to drop its existing tools and models.
“The industry concurs that traditional video coding tools presently outperform AI-based alternatives in most areas today,” it states. “There are over 30 years of engineering effort and hundreds of companies involved in perfecting video compression standards; this isn’t easily replicated or supplanted by introducing AI into the discipline.”
For instance, the complexity of neural networks “is often exceptionally high” which leads to a proportional increase in energy usage.
“This leads to the inevitable questions around the scalability of such solutions, and the impact of media on environmental sustainability,” InterDigital says.
There are other challenges with AI-based video development. One of them is measurement. While the video standard is fully described and verified against agreed metrics, “when using AI, it is sometimes difficult to explain exactly how the implementation operates; there must be an understanding on how AI-based algorithms adhere to the specifications and produce standards-compliant bitstreams.”
Part of the work of the JVET AhG11 is to establish clear rules by which AI methods can be assessed and made reproducible.
Then there’s the sheer pace of development in AI, which has resulted in generation of synthetic media. With synthetic media, instead of transmitting an image for every frame using existing compression techniques, systems can use AI to identify key data points describing the features of a person’s face. A compact representation is then sent across the network, where a second AI engine reconstructs the original image from the point data.
Consequently, InterDigital thinks it may become unnecessary to send video frames, and instead systems might describe scenes using metadata.
The next evolution is data-driven synthetic media, created in near-real time and used in place of traditional media that could see hyper-personalized video advertising created and delivered within seconds.
“Cloud and device AI processing capability will undoubtedly need to develop substantially for this to happen at scale,” says InterDigital, “however the future for video coding and transmission certainly seems destined for significant transformation.”
A new paper from Shift Media details the codecs most commonly used today and how they’re applied to perform different jobs.
May 1, 2023
Posted
April 25, 2023
How SVODs Are Shifting Their Business Models
TL;DR
There is currently a huge push towards ad-basedbusiness models among ad-free subscription-based services. Introducing advertising allowscompanies to maximize revenue while loweringthe cost of entry and thus attracting more users.
More than three-quarters of SVOD streamers plan to introduce ads by 2025, with nearly 60% of those planning to implement a hybrid model that combines an ad-supported tier alongside a premium, subscription-based one.
Adoption of third-party video analytics is well underway. 39% of ad-based services don’t fully trust their ad server data, yet only 25% use third-party ad analytics.
More than three-quarters of SVOD streamers plan to introduce ads by 2025, according to a new global B2B industry survey by video intelligence company NPAW. And nearly 60% of those will implement a hybrid model that combines an ad-supported tier alongside a premium, subscription-based one.
All of the survey respondents agree that the main driver for this shift is to lower the price of subscriptions for their viewers. Of the sample of streaming platforms surveyed for this study, 41% currently have a two-tier business model.
In second place comes free services with ads (23%), also known as the FAST model, and subscription-based with ads (22%). The traditional SVOD model, subscription-based pricing without ads, was the business model with the smallest sample representation (15%).
Overall, 85% of the companies NPAW spoke to are using ads as part of their monetization model.
Since NPAW is a provider of video analytics and business intelligence, it spends most of its survey assessing the use case for analytics.
“One of the key advantages of having full visibility into user behavior and experience is that services can identify users at risk of churn early on and address their perceived shortcomings before it’s too late,” the company explained. “This can be done by monitoring drops in usage and Quality-of-Experience issues such as buffering or latency.”
With that in mind, the survey asked respondents using third-party analytics if they used it to pinpoint at-risk users. Seventy-four percent of companies use their third-party analytics tool to identify customers at risk of churn. Eleven percent identify such users through other means, while 10% cannot do so with their tool’s information.
The most popular measurement method is with the data received from the ad server (38%) — despite 39% of companies believing that their ad server numbers are not fully reliable and accurate.
Third-party analytics tools were the most popular among a quarter or respondents, and another quarter favor a combination of these methods.
“It’s encouraging to see that more and more companies are taking a data-driven approach to running their video business, especially as the industry’s shift to ads brings a unique set of measurement challenges,” said NPAW CMO Till Sudworth. “To truly make the most of their advertising-based streaming business, video providers will need an advanced, third-party ad analytics tool — one that can help them track ad performance from an end-user perspective and correlate that information with insights about user behavior and content preferences.”
From scale to segmentation, market data platform Antenna highlights five factors of importance in the year ahead for streaming companies.
June 27, 2023
Posted
April 24, 2023
Why Streaming Has to Become More Social, Interactive, and Immersive
TL;DR
Deloitte’s latest Digital Media Trends survey says “subscription fatigue” among consumers is getting worse, making it even more challenging for SVOD streamers to retain customers.
Millennials are the most likely to have made changes to digital media subscriptions due to economic pressures.
Americans spend $48 per month on video streaming services — and half of those surveyed say that’s too much.
As streaming video competition continues to intensify, subscription growth rates across the industry have slowed — and churn rates have increased, according to Deloitte’s 17th annual Digital Media Trends report.
On average, US consumers pay $48 per month for SVODs, Deloitte’s survey found. About half of those surveyed agreed that they “pay too much” for SVOD services, while about one-third said they intend to reduce their number of entertainment subscriptions.
Around half of consumers (47%) surveyed said they have made at least one change to their entertainment subscriptions because of their current financial situation, such as canceling a paid service to save money, switching to a free ad-supported version of a service or bundling services together.
Millennials are the most likely to have made changes to digital media subscriptions due to economic pressures. Indeed, millennials spend more than any other generation on paid streaming video services — an average of $54 per month. Nearly 45% of millennials have “churned and returned” with a paid SVOD service, cancelling a paid subscription only to renew that same subscription within six months, according to Deloitte’s study.
The report said that watching TV shows and movies at home is no longer the dominant, “go-to” activity it once was — especially with younger generations that are more evenly dividing their entertainment time across TV shows and movies, user-generated content (UGC) on social media services, and video games. They seek entertainment, connection, immersion and utility.
Deloitte describes millennials using media via a personalized tapestry of immersive, social and vibrant experiences. SVODs, therefore, need to adopt and accelerate new strategies to reduce churn that accounts for this change in consumer behavior.
Kevin Westcott, a vice chair who leads the US Technology, Media & Telecommunications practice at Deloitte, said, “The race to continue to add customers by commissioning and acquiring really high-cost content will not succeed on its own.”
The influence of video games is illuminating. More than half of younger gamers decide to play a specific video game after watching a certain TV show or movie. About 45% of gamers said they want to play games based on their favorite movies and TV shows. More than a third of gamers say they feel better about their self-image when they’re playing video games. In addition, Deloitte said, almost half of Gen Z and millennial gamers say they socialize more in video games than in the physical world. A majority of Gen Z and millennial gamers wish more of their favorite movies and TV shows also had video game experiences.
The report said 32% of people surveyed in the US consider online experiences to be meaningful replacements for in-person experiences. For Gen Zs and Millennials, it’s 50%.
Half of consumers say UGC videos help them to discover new products or services to buy, and around 40% of consumers say they are more likely to purchase a product after they watch a creator they follow review it.
Westcott said SVOD services should invest in diversifying the content on their platforms, including considering incorporating user-generated short-form video, music and games.
“Streamers are under pressure to reinforce their core offerings, but they should also be leveraging gaming and social media, especially considering the behaviors we are seeing in younger generations. To stay competitive, SVOD providers should seriously consider how to engage broader audiences, play across diverse media properties that add value, and advance their ad platforms to better support advertisers.”
This Week: Interesting creator economy insight from my visit to the International Journalism Festival (#IJF23) last week. Revealing data from the Shorts team and the TikTok and YouTube creators were surprising. I also spoke about LinkedIn (see tips section below). Also a Snap summit, AI fakes and megatrends too! It’s the last week of April and here’s what you need to know.
Seven Surprisingly Successful Shorts Formats: The YouTube Shorts team shared fascinating insight at #IJF23 about how the algorithm really works – and how different it is from long form. They gave tips on how news and factual creators should build views and audience on Shorts and laid out the seven formats that drive the most views. No surprise – they still won’t commit to longer than 60 seconds. But they did encourage creators to experiment and use analytics. Fifty billion daily views can’t be wrong. Related – Video Creators with more insight on Shorts growth and Paddy Galloway’s more pessimistic research findings.
Could TikTok and YouTube Save Journalism? Dueling panels at #IFJ attempted to pit YouTube vs TikTok but ended up elevating both. Google News brought top YouTube journalists – including Chloe Abraham and Johnny Harris – to talk about how they’re building the creator economy of journalism. Over on the TikTok side, Washington Post’s TikTok star Dave Jorgenson was joined by execs from Brut and The News Movement to explore TikTok. No sparks ensued, as the panelists were more alike than different. Read my story about the sessions and let me know if you agree with my startling conclusion: TikTok, YouTube and other social video platforms might actually save journalism.
AI-Generated Creator-First Media Is Not Going Away: Big dust-up over the AI-generated Drake and Weeknd song released early last week. Everyone loved it – except the two artists and their label. And everyone else who creates authentic media. But this is not going away. Creators and artists can either embrace it and build new business models or put their heads in the sand and sue everyone. Imagine, for example, if Taylor Swift started her own “Swiftify” service that included all her music – but also encouraged fans to develop GenAI Swift songs too. And she promised to share revenue for top creations? Swifties would subscribe for sure and everyone would make money. Is this the end of music as we know it, or a great new opportunity for creators? Share your thoughts in the comments below. For a more far-out think piece, check out Stratechery’s take.
Snap Expands Revenue Sharing: Big news from Snap’s Partner Summit – now more creators can get in on the revenue. It’s a welcome expansion of the monetization options we’ve been talking about here for the last few weeks and could transform Snap into a viable creator economy platform. But it’s also a diffusion of vision, according to Casey Newton, who sees these moves as a hazy way to become just like everyone else. I think Snap can do both, and that this is great news for creators – for now. The hard work comes from expanding the platform and offering more opportunity to creators while still charting a unique course.
Three Megatrends that Will Change Media: Media cartographer Evan Shapiro explores the rise of “Yes, AND” across all forms of media – from broadcast to streaming to creator-first platforms. It’s all about the cults, he insists. Worth a read. Also, he wants to change “Creator Economy” to “Community Economy”. I’ve been calling it community-centric media for years, so of course I agree. Still not changing the name of this newsletter though.
Beware of lazy reporting. This story from Net Influencer highlights a study from 2022 as if it were brand new (I covered it here on 11-28-2022). The data is from May 2022. It’s ancient history.
Newsletter plug: I really likethe “Film Booth” newsletter, great stuff last week about focus, burn-out and thumbnails. Worth subscribing to (scroll to bottom of Ed’s site).
Good essay on “Eventness” from Brad Berens, riffing off the end of TNG. You can skip much of the trekkie stuff at the top, but anyone creating live experiences should read this.
Tip of the Week: I gave a workshop at #IJF23 on how journalists can use LinkedIn to build their personal brand – you can download the slides from that presentation here. It’s relevant to anyone looking to grow on LinkedIn.
Thanks for reading and see you around the internet. Send me a note with your feedback, or post in the comments! Feel free to share this with anyone you think might be interested, and if someone forwarded this to you, you can sign up and subscribe on LinkedIn for free here!
Jim Louderback: The Platform Helping Mid-Level Creators Pull Down Six Figures a Week On Snap – Plus Old Media Titans vs. Scrappy Underdogs (Again)
BY JIM LOUDERBACK
TL;DR
Snap has turned super-lucrative, at least for authenticated creators. I sat in on an eye-popping Rich Greenfield-moderated creator panel (free reg) with Savannah Demers, King Bach and Tati Bruening.
This Week: How to make six figures on Snap, Izea’s surprising study on how much we trust creators, and what to do when your creator career wanes. Plus, Montana bans TikTok, new Reels features and much more. It’s the third week of April 2023 and here’s what you need to know.
Grinding For Crystals: Snap has turned super-lucrative, at least for authenticated creators. I sat in on an eye-popping Rich Greenfield-moderated creator panel (free reg) with Savannah Demers, King Bach and Tati Bruening. Bach said creators can make way more on Snap than YouTube and six figures in a week is not uncommon. It’s all about crystals, added Savannah, the more you post, the more crystals you get. Want more crystals? It’s all about “how good is your clickbait”, she added. Crystals mean money, explained Tati, redeemable for ten cents each. Rich and I will be talking about this and more on stage at VidCon – see you there! And in related news Instagram plans to expand Reels revshare with many more creators “soon”.
Established Media – Embrace or Obstruct? Brian Morrissey with a thoughtful essay on how Barry Diller and other traditional media titans are girding for war against AI and Large Language Models. It’s a familiar story that played out repeatedly during the rise of the creator economy, and typically leads to heartbreak for the courtroom crusaders. Remember when Viacom sued YouTube in 2007 and famously shunned the popular platform until a settlement in 2014. Bad strategic move, as the MTV parent lost an entire generation of kids – and subsequently had to buy Awesomeness and VidCon to rebuild relevance. But that won’t stop the old guard from trying – thus accelerating their slide into irrelevance.
We Trust Creators More Than Celebrities: That’s just one of the surprising conclusions from Izea’s new “Trust in Influencer Marketing” study. Fielded in mid-December 2022, it finds that even older consumers are jumping on the “buy from influencers” bandwagon. Best platforms? Still YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, but TikTok is rising – and GenZ leads the way. Good stuff, but directional, not predictive.
Your Trip is Short: Let’s face it, the creator lifecycle is even shorter than an NFL player. Very few YouTubers from 2010 – for instance – are big now. The shelf-life for TikTokers is even more fleeting. What do you do? One option: work for other creators behind the camera. Or get a job and create for the company too (NYT$). Companies are waking up to the unique value that creators can bring – even training their employees to create on the side. Just make sure you don’t sign your rights away when you take the job.
QUIBIS:
Instagram rolls out new Reels features, including a “What’s Trending” section, updated analytics and better editing tools.
New social network for creators – CreatorLand – wants you to sign up. Alas, I could only get on the waitlist and it didn’t recognize my LinkedIn followers.
Where’s Jim: This week I’m hosting Creator Squared at The Nab Show Monday and Tuesday (Vegas baby) and then speaking at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy on April 22. Then hanging out first weekend at Jazzfest NOLA! Hope to see you at one of these awesome events.
Thanks for reading, and see you around the internet. Send me a note with your feedback, or post in the comments! Feel free to share this with anyone you think might be interested, and if someone forwarded this to you, you can sign up and subscribe on LinkedIn for free here!
A comprehensive analysis of the creator economy by global VC firm Antler shows an industry in transition.
April 14, 2023
Posted
April 14, 2023
How Connected TV Can/Should Enable Content Discovery
TL;DR
LG Ad Solutions study highlights the importance of TV homepages as the focal point for content discovery amid increasing amount of content available on CTV.
Consumers reported spending an average of 5.7 minutes between the time they turned on the TV and when they started watching content.
A fifth of viewers say they are watching less linear cable and satellite TV than 12 months ago.
Viewers take almost six minutes on average to select a piece of content to watch after turning on the TV, according to new research.
The results show that, even when viewers do know what they want to watch, 40% are still confused about where to find it because of the number of different streaming TV options available.
The new findings are from LG Ad Solutions, based on a survey of more than 750 US consumers in March 2023, seeking to determine consumer perceptions and behavior related to CTV.
Being a CTV ad sales company, LG Ad Solutions turns this into an opportunity. With an average 5.7 minutes spent between turning on the TV and watching content this represents a chance for service providers to advertise new programming in a contextually relevant environment, the company says.
Tony Marlow, CMO of LG Ad Solutions, commented, “Our data indicates that 39% of viewers have used recommendations from their TV’s homepage when they’re looking for something new to watch — and we anticipate that number to increase as Smart TV adoption continues to climb. The home screen is the new center of the CTV experience where consumers can search for specific content, and find recommendations when they aren’t sure what they want to watch.”
Being a CTV solutions company, the report naturally underlines the drift from linear TV and subscription streamers towards free and ad-supported on-demand content.
Per the survey, a fifth of viewers say they are watching less linear cable and satellite TV than 12 months ago. The reasons being: exclusive content only available on streaming; ability to watch major network shows on demand; alternative free ad-supported channels with curated content focused on specific genres; and major sports events like the Super Bowl and March Madness now available via streaming.
With 46% of respondents (extrapolated to approximately half of the US TV viewing audience) reporting they had cancelled a streaming service citing economic concerns, more and more are turning to free streaming services.
What’s more those free services are overwhelmingly likely to be watched on the main Connected TV. LG states that 93% of US internet users are reachable by CTV. “Any advertising plan that doesn’t include CTV is missing out on valuable opportunities to connect with consumers,” it says.
After rapid adoption of streaming content on CTV, fueled in-part by stay-at-home guidance at the onset of the pandemic, a second “big shift” is now underway.
“Consumers are drifting away from some of their CTV subscriptions and increasingly preferring free content that is supported by ads,” Marlow said.
The survey reinforces several trends from other recent studies. This includes SVOD starting to offer free and reduced subscription options as a way to entice viewers to stay on the platform and viewer confusion about where to find content given the multiplicity of choice (nearly half of US TV viewers feel overwhelmed by the amount of content choices available to them). The survey repeats the suggestion that viewers share a stronger affinity towards specific content rather than the streaming platform itself.
Add the Amplify+ VIP package to your NAB Show registration for only $99 and gain access to an exclusive community online and at the Show. Plus, you’ll enjoy year-round networking, education, content and Show perks so you’re always in the know at and between Shows.
For $99, you’ll gain access to expedited VIP entry at the Main Stage theater, access to the NAB Amplify+ VIP Lounge and Wi-Fi Hot Spot located in Central Hall lobby, and an exclusive invite to the NAB Amplify+ VIP Party on Monday, April 17 at Aria Jewel with expedited VIP entry starting at 10:30 p.m.
Beginning May 2, you’ll also find a full article in your email inbox each Tuesday offering exclusive NAB Show conversations, sessions and recaps. You’ll also be granted VIP perks when you register for NAB Show New York, October 25 – 26, 2023.
A new report from TiVo finds that discovering video content is a bigger issue than what we pay each month for the programs we want to watch.
April 15, 2023
Posted
April 14, 2023
SVOD: Scale and the Curse of the Serial Churner
TL;DR
Market data platform Antenna highlights five factors of importance in the year ahead: pursuing scale, revenue optimization, dual revenue streams, owning the customer relationship, and customer segmentation.
Perhaps the most important battle is now around owning the customer relationship, but customer segmentation could be the defining topic going forward.
With an increased focus on profitable growth, SVODs are becoming more aggressive in their efforts to maximize revenue, even at the expense of some topline subscriber growth.
SVODs are experiencing tremendous volatility and we should expect more targeted acquisition strategies from the major streamers, an increased focus on pricing and packaging, and numerous moves to mitigate churn.
According to market data platform Antenna in its latest report, “The State of Subscriptions,” last year represented a turning point for premium SVODs. While total subscriptions grew substantially at 14.1% over the prior year, that rate of growth was significantly slower than 2021’s 28.9%. Worryingly, Antenna observed 117 million cancels across Premium SVODs in 2022, up 49% from the prior year.
NBCU, Paramount, and WBD were especially successful at growing their subs in 2022 taking share from Netflix and Disney although the latter two still lead the pack.
“With an increased focus on profitable growth, SVODs are becoming more aggressive in their efforts to maximize revenue, even at the expense of some topline subscriber growth,” Antenna reports.
Price increases are the most obvious example of this: Netflix, Apple TV+, Disney+, and Hulu all raised fees in 2022, and HBO Max did so this January. Paramount and NBCU also announced pricing moves in the opening months of 2023.
Intra-company bundles are another strategy to drive increased Average Revenue Per User (ARPU).
Antenna estimates that the Disney Bundle now accounts for 22% of subscriptions for Disney+, 18% for Hulu, and 60% for ESPN+. The Apple One bundle accounts for 31% of Apple TV+ subscriptions, and subscribers to the Paramount+ and Showtime bundle grew 251% in 2022.
The role of advertising continues to grow in importance to premium SVODs, as a part of their profitable growth strategies. In 2020, only one in five new sign-ups were to ad-supported plans; last year, it was nearly one in three.
The four services that have had ad-supported plans since their inception — Peacock, Hulu, Paramount+, and Discovery+ — each have at least 43% of Subscribers on the ad-supported option.
And ads are gaining ground. The proportion of 2022 Gross Adds (i.e., new customers) who selected the ad-supported option is higher than the existing subscriber base for six of the seven premium SVODs.
Owning the Customer Relationship
An increasingly important battle is the competition for the customer relationship. 53% of Gross Adds that Antenna observed in 2022 came through a distribution platform — Apple, Amazon, Roku or Google — not directly with the services themselves.
“D2C models are great for brands because they do not share margin with retailers or wholesalers, and they fully control the customer relationship. When an SVOD service wins a customer through a distribution partner, they typically share the economics, and the distribution partner controls portions of the customer data and communication (sometimes, a lot of it).”
These distribution arrangements can potentially deliver substantial incremental customers. And in environments like Amazon channels which load the services’ programming directly into their app, SVODs can save product development and upkeep costs because they do not have to operate their own proprietary app.
Antenna says, “Balancing the benefits and challenges of distributing in third-party environments is a key issue that Services will consider as they manage to profitable growth in the coming years.”
The final theme is one that Antenna think will be a defining topic for subscription marketers for years to come: customer segmentation.
There are many different approaches for segmenting consumers, but two which it believe are especially important for subscription marketers are re-subscribers and serial churners.
Re-subscribers are consumers who sign up for a service after previously cancelling it and made up 23% of all gross additions in 2022.
“Netflix has a high re-subscriber number simply because so many Americans have already subscribed to the service at some point in the past. Put another way, Netflix is running out of Americans who have never tried Netflix!“
On the other end of the spectrum, Peacock had almost no re-subscribers in 2020 because it launched in April of that year, but already by 2022, 20% of their Gross Adds were observed by Antenna to be re-subscribers.
Serial churners are those individuals frequently moving in and out of services — often to chase hit shows they want to watch at that moment.
Antenna measures them as individuals who have at least three cancels in the past two years among the 10 premium SVOD services it measures.
So by that definition, one in five Americans is a serial churner and accounted for 29% of sign-ups in 2022, up from 15% in 2020.
Netflix is seeing a particularly pronounced growth, with serial churners making up 32% of sign-ups in 2022, versus 13% in 2020.
Per Antenna, “It is crucial that services segment out these serial churners. For one thing, their survival curves are much steeper than the rest of subscribers, resulting in lower customer lifetime values. If a service is not distinguishing between these two segments, then their analysis of cost of acquisition will be misleading.”
While changing macroeconomic conditions have played a factor in all these changes, the adjustment is also suitable in the context of a more mature market and a more fickle – or more sophisticated — consumer.
How streamers can use the lessons learned from the past year in 2023 to help rebound from recent subscriber losses and stock price declines.
April 25, 2023
Posted
April 13, 2023
Live Video: How Broadcasters Can Meaningfully Engage with 5G, Cloud, and IP
TL;DR
Haivision’s latest Broadcast Transformation Report analyzes technology trends in live video contribution, 5G, cloud, IP and sustainability.
The results indicate that adoption of network technologies including cloud, IP and 5G continues to evolve, while on-premise operations remain absolutely critical in the broadcast industry.
In addition, the findings highlight that broadcasters recognize the important benefits that 5G cellular networks offer for broadcast applications.
Enabling remote production and transitioning to IP are the top investment priorities for broadcasters, this year, according to Haivision’s latest Broadcast Transformation Report.
The report was culled from 700 broadcast and media professionals around the world.
More than half of respondents put remote and IP transition at the top of their agenda and over half of those surveyed already use IP infrastructure.
Also of note is that 45% of broadcast professionals work for organizations that are actively working on developing sustainability strategies or already have sustainability plans in place.
To our minds that doesn’t seem nearly enough for what should be the issue driving all technology and organizational policies in any media company.
Cloud has become an integral element to broadcast workflows, but it is clear that on-premise technology remains critical. Haivision found that despite 84% of broadcasters stating their use of at least some cloud-based technology in their workflows, 60% rely on cloud for less than a quarter of their workflows.
Meanwhile 5G is a key enabler for the vast majority (73%) of those surveyed although the degree of its actual or planned use is not teased out by this survey.
“After diving into this year’s survey findings, it’s clear that in order to deliver engaging, high-quality content for audiences around the world, broadcasters must meaningfully engage with new technologies such as 5G, cloud, and IP,” said Marcus Schioler, VP of Marketing at Haivision.
“Next-gen technology offers true potential for production teams to effectively achieve broadcast objectives through faster and more efficient means. And, as cloud and 5G innovation continues, we anticipate the many benefits these technologies will bring to live broadcast workflows.”
That said the use of the internet to transport live video for contribution is booming. That would hardly be a surprise in a report from a vendor of encoding solutions and leader of the SRT pack. In fact, 86% use internet, with 3G/4G/LTE taking second place.
“As the internet becomes more popular in its use for video contribution, other elements of the broadcast workflow must follow suit. As a result, 68% of respondents use SRT for live video transport, overtaking RTMP.”
SMPTE teams with Portland company Port 9 on the development of live production workflows that give broadcasters all the benefits of cloud.
August 22, 2023
Posted
April 12, 2023
Evan Shapiro: Streaming Habits Have Shifted (Again)… Here’s How and Why
TL;DR
Nearly four years deep into the streaming wars and emerging from post-lockdown subscription hangover, the state of streaming TV is best described as “in flux.”
US consumer streaming behavior is shifting rapidly and is doing so somewhat differently at the far ends of the demographic spectrum.
Life experience — how we were raised to watch TV — still seems to influence how we consume TV now.
The report finds a substantial bifurcation of TV consumption along generational lines. Life experience — how we were raised to watch TV — still seems to influence how we consume TV now.
“For those under 45, streaming culture — bingeing, cancelling after a binge, streaming content for free — are TV norms,” Shapiro says. “Those over 45 years of age maintain many of the habits they had when choice and viewer control were not so abundant.”
Digging deeper: 40% of viewers under 45 say bingeing is their preferred way to watch series. Consumers older than 45 are most likely to choose their viewing method based on the show.
These habits seem to correlate to the number of services each group has: the younger a subscriber, the more services they subscribe to.
Forty-three per cent of Americans under 45 have three or more streaming TV subscriptions, while more Americans over 45 have zero premium paid streaming services (32%) than have three (31%).
Sixty-eight percent of consumers over 45 and 78% of those under 45 have one or more paid streaming services, leading Shapiro to conclude, “Paying for streaming TV is now normal entertainment behavior at all ends of the demographic spectrum.”
However, so is churning.
Forty percent of younger streamers say they occasionally or regularly sign up for a service for a specific show or movie, watch that content, and cancel before the next billing cycle. More than a quarter of older Americans also say they also participate in serial churning.
Movies remain the content genre subscribers value most. Together with premium episodic shows, these two content genres determine a large portion of subscription decisions.
That’s not to say that kids programming and live sports aren’t important, with around 15% of subscribers to each genre likely to be more loyal to their service provider.
According to this survey, Disney tops the chart of domestic streaming popularity, largely helped by Hulu, beating both Netflix and YouTube to take the crown.
Warner Brothers Discovery is in the elite tier, right on Amazon’s heels, and the combined Paramount+/Pluto TV is another streaming giant.
When it comes to free streaming services, this survey suggests that Tubi, Roku Channel and Pluto TV “appear to be reaching critical mass among younger viewers,” yet all are more popular than notable paid services like AppleTV+, ESPN+ and Discovery+.
Free streaming is now the top TV choice with consumers under 45, and second only to cable TV among viewers over 45. It is YouTube which is far and away the leading free video platform “quickly becoming the go-to channel on CTV for all ages.”
Shapiro writes, “What this data does makes clear is that subscribers are getting pickier, and nimbler in their leaps from one service to another. Bingeing has generated a growing wave serial churn, and the changing economics of entertainment have given consumers a vast content smorgasbord, which they are actively sampling.
“It is also clear that older audiences and younger see their content consumption and platform choices quite differently — at least for now. To keep customers from serial churning, platforms and publishers should respond with pricing and packaging flexible enough to serve all ages.”
Media analyst Evan Shapiro says no one knows exactly where the industry is headed… but here are some possibilities.
April 11, 2023
Posted
April 11, 2023
Jim Louderback: Twitter vs. Substack, More Meta Missteps and Amazing New AI Tools to Auto-Convert Long-Form to TikTok, Shorts and Reels
BY JIM LOUDERBACK
TL;DR
Auto cutting, clipping and reposting video is about to be democratized. Tubebuddy just released its “Suggested Shorts” tool, which combs through YouTube videos, evaluates viewership data and then suggests which sections would make great shorts.
Matt Gielen from Little Monster shares his home-grown process to value a YouTube back catalog to help you value your videos fairly.
Looks like the road to efficiency means less support for creators. By thinning the ranks of the creator partnership team, Meta yet again shows how little it cares for the creators that make it successful.
Twitter and Substack are now at war. If you have a Substack newsletter, you can no longer use Twitter to promote it.
This Week: Exciting new AI tools to auto-cut, clip and reformat your videos. A new way to value your back catalog and make more money. Meta lays off much of its creator partnership team leaving creators without support. Meanwhile, Twitter and Substack are at war, and TikTok was fined $16M for exposing children. Plus, genAI ads are in the works from Meta, and Li Jin shares why most NFT projects fail. It’s the second week of April and here’s what you need to know.
Pooping Shorts: Auto cutting, clipping and reposting video is about to be democratized. Tubebuddy just released its “Suggested Shorts” tool, which combs through YouTube videos, evaluates viewership data and then suggests which sections would make great shorts. That’s a good first step, but what we really want is a tool that gobbles up long-form and poops out short-form. Enter Bigroom.tv and Opus Clip. Still in beta, but you can try ‘em today. 2 year-old Munch is another contender here, and Jellysmack will soon join the party with a product that presumably expands the auto resizing technology they acquired from Kamua. DM Paul Robert Cary if you want early access. It’s just the beginning of how GenAI will help you pinch every last penny from your videos. Related: the curious tale of short form clips with no long form parents from Garbage Day.
Valuing Your Back Catalog: Speaking of Jellysmack, they – along with Spotter – are aggressively renting back catalogs from YouTubers to create monetization scale. But how do you know you’re getting a good deal? Matt Gielen from Little Monster shares his home-grown process to value a YouTube back catalog to help you value your videos fairly. Remember, once you have your expected revenue over time you need to apply a “Net Present Value” to come up with today’s value (which you can do in Excel or Google Sheets).
Meta Lays off Creator Partnership Staff: Looks like the road to efficiency means less support for creators. By thinning the ranks of the creator partnership team, Meta yet again shows how little it cares for the creators that make it successful. Let me remind you once again – the platforms are not in business to support creators. They are beholden only to their shareholders. Oh, but apparently there is a way for creators to get timely support. Pay for it. Creators screwed yet again.
Twitter Declares War! That’s right, Twitter and Substack are now at war. If you have a Substack newsletter, you can no longer use Twitter to promote it. Why the vitriol? Substack created a similar service to Twitter, called Substack Notes, and that made Musk madder than a wampus cat in a rainstorm. Matt Taibbi – who actually WROTE the Twitter files – was just one of the ostracized authors. Ryan Broderick was too. Maybe it was just a “bug”? Whatever it was, there’s one thing for sure. Creators got screwed again.
Piper Sandler releases spring edition of its semi-annual “Taking Stock With Teens” – although absent a methodology consider it directional not projectable.
Tip of the Week: I made a few fun “Animai” videos of my dogs. Designed for people, it’s a neat way to get a wacky video of yourself for a profile picture or something else.
Thanks so much for reading and see you around the internet. Send me a note with your feedback, or post in the comments! Feel free to share this with anyone you think might be interested, and if someone forwarded this to you, you can sign up and subscribe on LinkedIn for free here!
The burgeoning creator economy — of content creators monetizing their content directly with fans — is estimated to be worth $75 billion by next year and has caught the attention of big finance.
The findings of banking group Citi may not be revelatory but the fact that conventional finance has charted the market lends weight to arguments made by Web3 exponents that change in the distribution of labor and reward is afoot.
Estimating the figure is challenging due to platform overlap. For example, a gamer that creates a live stream on Twitch may also have a YouTube channel and a Patreon account. And some YouTube channels are associated with traditional media firms (like a film or a blockbuster video game).
However, even with these complexities, there are stark differences between platforms. Citi estimates YouTube has nearly 100 million channels (excluding traditional media). Roblox has about 10 million developers. Etsy has about four million sellers. There are currently more than four million podcasts. At the other end of the spectrum, Substack only has a few thousand writers.
Around half of the revenue stems from ad-based video platforms, like YouTube. The other half is spread across a wide array of industries: publishing, education and podcasting, among others. Platforms charge fees that can vary from less than 10% of creator’s revenues (Patreon, Spotify and Unity) to as high as 85% (Roblox). Citi thinks the variance often depends on the value the platform provides across five functions, which it identifies as creation, hosting, distribution/promotion, and monetization. The more functions these platforms perform, the higher the fees.
The lion’s share of the revenue is captured by a very small portion of the content creators. Far more than 80% of the revenue is created by far less than 20% of the creators.
How much can a creator make in net revenue after paying fees to the various platforms varies considerably. The report suggests that a writer for Substack generates, on average, $25,000 per year. The average creator that uses Patreon generates $6,000 per year. At the other end of the spectrum, a developer that creates items for Roblox generates, on average, just $50 per year.
Citi concludes that a creator’s average net revenue is inversely proportional to the number of creators that use the platform. That is, while Substack writers generate the most net revenue, the platform has very few writers. YouTube is at the other extreme. While there are many creators on YouTube, the average net revenue per creator is quite modest. Revenue per creator on the other platforms — Etsy, Twitch or Roblox — falls in between.
Going forward, the bank highlights three areas worth watching.
First, traditional social media firms may begin to share some of the spoils with content creators. That is, platforms like Twitter may begin to emulate YouTube’s business model. Or, as Instagram and Facebook push further into e-commerce, they will create opportunities for content creators to share in the economic spoils.
Second, Web3 tools — like blockchain and crypto — will allow consumers to finance, own, and trade content rather than simply paying creators to consume it.
Digital wallets are one way that new Web3 tools can help creators with monetization. Using a subscription model linked to a digital wallet, readers can access creator content stored on a decentralized storage layer. The subscription paves the way for creators to build a wallet-based community that enables far richer engagement than passive consumption more common with Web2 tools.
“Whether these new tools will be embraced by legacy creator economy platforms or new platforms remains to be seen. But, Web 3.0 tools will certainly result in new innovations that are apt to benefit creators and consumers alike.”
Third, artificial intelligence may alter the creator economy in several ways including by helping with content creation, helping brands find the right influencer or helping consumers find the right content.
“We expect AI to be used to help bring some order to the highly fragmented creator economy ecosystem. For example, AI will likely be used to help consumers find the right content and can also be used to help brands find the right influencer.”
The cultural impact a creator has is already surpassing that of traditional media, but there’s still a stark imbalance of power between proprietary platforms and the creators who use them. Discover what it takes to stay ahead of the game with these fresh insights hand-picked from the NAB Amplify archives:
More than half of non-professional creators are now monetizing their work within the creator economy, according to a new survey from Adobe.
April 9, 2023
Posted
April 4, 2023
Jim Louderback: A Creator Economy in Transition + Pew TikTok Survey Finds Broad Support for Ban
BY JIM LOUDERBACK
TL;DR
One of the top global early-stage VC firms just updated their Creator Economy forecast, and it’s a must read.
Pew’s latest research – released Friday – shows that more than half of Americans are in favor of a TikTok ban, and more than a quarter aren’t sure.
Substack is only the most recent company to ask its users to pay to play. But instead of verified check marks, Substack re-opened its 2021 investment round.
This Week: A comprehensive analysis of the creator economy by global VC firm Antler shows an industry in transition, a new Pew report finds that only 22% of Americans oppose a TikTok ban, while 40% aged 18-29 didn’t know TikTok was owned by a Chinese company. Also, Substack’s head-scratching investment round, Wired’s takedown of live-streamed shopping, and the rise of video podcasts. It’s the first week of April and here’s what you need to know.
Fascinating Look at the Creator Economy in 2023: One of the top global early-stage VC firms just updated their Creator Economy forecast, and it’s a must read. With a mix of quantitative data and directional interviews, Antler concludes that “we see the industry moving toward consolidation rather than rapid growth—for now.” But “It is not failing—it is evolving and changing direction.” The report makes 6 salient predictions about platform trends and predicts creators will focus on building closer relationships with fans, diversify revenue streams, launch their own branded product lines and use Generative AI to go global. Author Ollie Forsyth and I chatted on stage at Creator World in Singapore last November, and he continues to deliver salient insights for all of us. Also I’m honored to be one of Antler’s 50 creators to watch this year.
Only 22% of Americans Oppose a TikTok Ban: That’s what Pew’s latest research – released Friday – shows. More than half are in favor, and more than a quarter aren’t sure. Other interesting nuggets: over 40% of Americans 18-29 didn’t know TikTok was owned by a Chinese company, while 88% across all ages don’t trust Chinese social companies. However, 75% also had misgivings about American social platforms too. How do teens and tweens feel? Unknown, as they weren’t included in the study.
Beware Social Platforms Begging for Money: Substack is only the most recent company to ask its users to pay to play. But instead of verified check marks, Substack re-opened its 2021 investment round, specifically for newsletter authors. More than 4,700 newsletter writers committed to invest over $5M for the not-yet profitable venture. Brian Morrissey put it best – and put it in context – when he wrote, “this is Willie Sutton skipping the bank to head to the library.” I appreciate the aligning of incentives here, but it should have been at either a substantial discount, or an outright grant based on standard metrics and vesting timelines.
Live-streamed Shopping Is a Dud in the West:That’s what Wired just concluded. “I haven’t seen one success case,” says an expert in the story. She might not be looking hard enough. Last week at Shoptalk, Max Benator and Orca showed off a pop-up live shopping experience with TikTok that mirrored a similar effort at SXSW. I’ve seen his rodeo and it’s impressive. There’s a difference, though, between China and the U.S. In the U.S. we want to be entertained, while in China they are OK with being sold to. Smart marketers are also using live shopping as part of broader awareness and conversion campaigns – and seeing $2 CPMs and $.10 cost per click from those live streams. The truth is out there if you only look for it.
The Rise of Video Podcasts: Looking for a long-form way to engage audiences and drive revenue? Perhaps a video podcast is the right approach. Both YouTube and Spotify are investing to build video-based conversational formats into their platforms. Spotify announced a new white-glove service with select Creative Juice creators, while YouTube expands via a new lockup with Slate. Video podcasting is nothing new, it started in 2003 and was popular on iTunes before YouTube was a thing. But up until five years ago it was relatively dormant. Not anymore. Riverside has a good overview of video podcasting – and now might be the time for more video creators and brands to dive in.
AI Is Bad, Mkay: In an open letter to, well, everyone, a who’s who of the AI industry called for a six month pause in ChatGPT4’s development. Somewhat disingenuous, as the signers included researchers at Google, the CEO of Stability AI, a famous entrepreneur building a ChatGPT competitor and many more. Ben Parr has a wonderful analysis revealing the absurdity of the letter that you should read. I think the Large Language Models of today are a dead-end, more mirror than true intelligence. They do, however, have great benefits to creators specifically and productivity in general. But artificial general intelligence will be here at some point, and now’s the time to build guardrails and ethics into AI research. For context, read Bill Gates’ long essay on where we are now, where we’re going and how we get there. Italy decided to move quickly – banning ChatGPT altogether.
Thanks for reading and see you around the internet. Send me a note with your feedback, or post in the comments! Feel free to share this with anyone you think might be interested, and if someone forwarded this to you, you can sign up and subscribe on LinkedIn for free here!
New per-post revenue analysis reveals the surprising state of creator earnings. Twitch is the most lucrative.
April 5, 2023
Posted
April 3, 2023
NAB Show Brings Hollywood Closer to Home With Main Stage IMAX Panel
TL;DR
On April 16, “IMAX Beyond the Big Screen” will showcase how IMAX technology worked with streamers and best-in-class devices to bring the big screen experience to in-home viewers. This panel is scheduled for 5 p.m. on the Main Stage.
The panel will feature IMAX Corp. SVP and General Manager of Streaming and Consumer Technology Vikram Arumilli. Dan Rayburn will moderate.
IMAX and SSIMWAVE will also exhibit in the West Hall at booth W1567.
The NAB Show will host IMAX on its Main Stage to highlight how the big screen entertainment technology company is going beyond viewer expectations for streaming experiences.
“IMAX Beyond the Big Screen” at 5 p.m. on April 16 showcases how IMAX’s signature movie-magic technology, combined with best-in-class devices and streaming platforms like Disney+, transport fans beyond the big screen to experience epic content in the home while preserving filmmaker intent and vision.
This appearance will mark IMAX’s NAB Show debut.
In this mainstage panel, moderator Dan Rayburn, conference chairman at NAB Show Streaming Summit, will be joined by Vikram Arumilli, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Streaming and Consumer Technology at IMAX Corporation.
Arumilli oversees the recently acquired SSIMWAVE, an image enhancement and streaming technology leader, and IMAX Enhanced, which leverages remastered content and world-class devices to bring blockbuster films into the home.
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“We are excited to be able to present our suite of streaming and video technology that’s pushing the signature IMAX theatrical experience into new realms,” said Arumilli. “The NAB Show has been at the cutting edge of broadcast technology for 100 years, and we believe that there is no better place to showcase our latest technology and immersive video experiences.”
Additionally, IMAX will have a presence in the West Hall, booth W1567, where it will showcase its new Stream Smart product and demo of video monitoring applications, among other technology.
“IMAX’s commitment to our show and our industry underscores the vital importance of Hollywood and streaming working hand-in-hand to give consumers the experiences they demand, no matter where they may be viewing,” Chris Brown, NAB EVP and managing director, Global Connections and Events, says.
Jim Louderback: Shocking! YouTube Subscribers and Views Devalued — and Epic Shakes Up the Creator Economy!
BY JIM LOUDERBACK
TL;DR
YouTube subscriber counts no longer matter, according to a story from Business Insider ($). It’s an unintended consequence of Shorts.
Fortnite is now open to creators as Epic Games launches “Creator Economy 2.0”. This includes a new Unreal Editor for Fortnite.
TikTok’s CEO testified in front of Congress, and according to most reports it did not go well. The Information’s Kaya Yurieff was there in person and ended up chatting with some of the creators that came to town in solidarity.
This Week: This week’s newsletter covers the devaluation of YouTube subscribers and views due to Shorts, Epic Games’ launch of “Creator Economy 2.0” for Fortnite, and the aftermath of TikTok’s CEO testifying in front of Congress. Plus, how generative AI will change the creator economy, along with trouble for Linus Tech Tips and Emma Chamberlain. Here’s what’s new and what caught my eye last week. Also, please welcome new sponsor Everbloom – a cool new way for anyone to invest in creators. It’s the end of March 2023, and here’s what you need to know.
Devaluing YouTube Subscribers: YouTube subscriber counts no longer matter, according to a story from Business Insider ($). It’s an unintended consequence of Shorts, as many creators have seen sub counts balloon after embracing YouTube’s TikTok killer. Eighteen months ago, we explored how Karat’s financial calculations showed that 1 YouTube sub is equivalent to 2.5 TikTok followers. That’s outdated now. Even worse, today’s creators are finding that most views come from non-subscribed users. One creator I talked to last week said that subscribers comprised 90% of his views 10 years ago, but today “that’s totally reversed”. This fundamentally changes how you produce, edit, and promote videos. Creator strategist Avi Gandhi thinks the average YouTube user has 10x more subs today than back in 2021 and says its “not a valuable metric for brands” either. And Spotter’s Rob Gabel points out that views counts are suspect too, with YouTube intermingling Shorts and long-form together. With subscribers devalued and intermingled view counts, how should we evaluate the reach, impact, and community of creators? Comments and thoughts welcome.
Epic Changes the Game for Creators: Fortnite is now open to creators as Epic Games launches “Creator Economy 2.0”. This includes a new Unreal Editor for Fortnite, making it easier for anyone to build experiences inside the popular game/world/metaverse, and a promise to share 40% of net revenue generated via these new “island” experiences. Kotuku puts it into context and shares some early creator efforts, including Toad Harbor from Mario Kart and a Shrek/Godzilla mash-up. In a related move, Roblox countered with new AI tools to make it easier for anyone to be a creator. The creator-centric metaverse is finally coming into focus and battle lines are being drawn.
Thanks so much for reading and see you around the internet. Send me a note with your feedback or post in the comments! Feel free to share this with anyone you think might be interested, and if someone forwarded this to you, you can sign up and subscribe on LinkedIn for free here!
New per-post revenue analysis reveals the surprising state of creator earnings. Twitch is the most lucrative.
March 26, 2023
Posted
March 24, 2023
The Art of the Prompt
BY ROBIN RASKIN
TL;DR
Now that the initial knee-jerk reactions to having Generative AI as our companions have quieted down a bit, it’s time to get to work and master the skills so that Generative AI is working for us, not the reverse.
The Kevin Roose shockwave, goaded every tech columnist to write something about how they broke AI, through a combination of provocation and beta testing the hell out of publicly released platforms.
Educational institutions are trying to figure out whether to ban Generative AI or teach it to their students. We’re rolling up our collective sleeves for the human/machine beta test.
Now that the initial knee-jerk reactions to having Generative AI as our companions have quieted down a bit, it’s time to get to work and master the skills so that Generative AI is working for us, not the reverse. The Kevin Roose shockwave, goaded every tech columnist to write something about how they broke AI, through a combination of provocation and beta testing the hell out of publicly released platforms like Bing AI, Google’s Bard, and the wildly popular ChatGPT.
In the early days of ChatGPT’s general release, Cnet had some faux pas including plagiarism and misinformation seeping into its AI-generated journalism. This week Wired magazine very carefully spelled out its internal rules for how it will incorporate generative AI in its journalism. (No for images, yes for research, no for copyediting, maybe for idea generation.) Educational institutions are trying to figure out whether to ban it or teach it to their students. We’re rolling up our collective sleeves for the human/machine beta test.
Meanwhile, folks like Evo Heyning, creator/founder at Realitycraft.Live, and author of a lovely interactive book called PromptCraft has been doubling down to dissect, coach, and cheer us into the world of using Generative AI effectively. The book, co-written with a slew of AI companions like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion,ChatGPT, and more, looks at the art, science, and lots of iterations that will help get the most out of the creative man/machine communications. You can watch some of her fast-paced Promptcraft lessons on YouTube. They’re kind of the AI-generative of the arti-isodes of Bob Ross on PBS.
A Magic Mirror for Collective Intelligence
Heyning has worked in AI, as a coder, storyteller, and world-builder since the early days of experimentation. She’s also been a monk, chaplain, and just about everything else that defines a renaissance woman who thinks deeply about AI. “Are the models merely stochastic parrots that spit back our own model? Or are they giving us something that’s a deeper level of comprehension?” she asks.
“AI,” she continues, “is like querying our collective intelligence. Right now most of our chat tools are mirrors of everything that they’ve experienced. They’re closer to asking a magic mirror about collective intelligence than they are about any sort of unique intelligence.”
Our jobs are to learn the language or the query to coax the best out of the machine. “AI Whisperers,” those who can create, frame, and refine prompts are out of the gate with a valued skillset.
While prompts for generating text, images, movies, and music will vary, there are certain commonalities. “A prompt,” says Heyning, “starts by breaking down the big vision of what you’d like to see created, encapsulating it into as few words as possible.” She likens a lot of the process to a cinematographer calling the shots. “You’re thinking about what the focal point of your creation will be. The world of the prompt is about our relationships with AI, and it includes shifts in language that come from both sides, not just from the human side, but also from alternative intelligences.”
Five Easy Pieces
Heyning talks about her process of including five pieces in a prompt. They include the type of content, the description of that content, the composition, the style, and the parameters.
Content Type: In art prompts, the type of content might be a poster or a sticker. For text it might be a letter or a research paper.
Description: The description of the content defines your scene (a frog on a lily pond).
Composition: The composition is the equivalent of your instruction in a movie (frog gulping down a fly or in the bright sunshine).
Style: The style might be pointillism, (or for text the style of comedy writing).
Parameters: Finally, the parameter might be landscape or portrait, or, for text a word count.
Providing context is also a key component. Details about the setting, characters, and mood help you get the image you had in your mind’s eye. “Negative weights” — things that should not be in your creation can be important, too. Heyning discourages the use of using artists, especially living artists, names in the prompt. These derivatives beg copyright questions and remind us to use commas in our prompts to make them more intelligible to the machine. “They act as separators to help the generator parse a scene.”
Heyning’s quite the optimist about how humans and AI will work together, even in much-debated areas like education. “Kids are learning about art history from reading prompts created using Midjourney,” she marvels. “They are introduced to impressionism, realism and abstract art. They’re using terms like knolling (knolling is the act of arranging different objects so that they are at 90-degree angles from each other, then photographing them from above), once relegated to the realm of trained graphic designers.”
What I learned from my crash course in prompting? The power of a good prompt is the power of parsimonious thinking — getting to the essence of what you want to create. Similar to coding, but different, because you don’t need to learn a foreign language, this is a much more Zen-like effort. Stripping away all that’s unnecessary; down to the perfect phrase. (P.S. If you prompt ChatGPT to tell you how to write the perfect prompt you’ll read even more about the Art of the Prompt.)
Even with AI-powered text-to-image tools like DALL-E 2, Midjourney and Craiyon still in their relative infancy, artificial intelligence and machine learning is already transforming the definition of art — including cinema — in ways no one could have ever predicted. Gain insights into AI’s potential impact on Media & Entertainment in NAB Amplify’s ongoing series of articles examining the latest trends and developments in AI art
Executives at the 2023 South by Southwest conference urge users to consider AI tools as helpers for human activities such as brainstorming.
March 26, 2023
Posted
March 24, 2023
Jim Louderback: Diffusion of Creator Intention Will Defang TikTok, Plus How GPT4 Will Revolutionize Global Productivity
BY JIM LOUDERBACK
TL;DR
The possibility of a ban or sale of TikTok, including recent poll results and how creators could lead the way.
Meta’s latest layoffs and a historical context for the company’s metaverse pivot.
The release of GPT4 and GenAI’s potential to supercharge productivity for creators and beyond.
This Week: Three different topics impacting the Creator Economy – first, the possibility of a ban or sale of TikTok, including recent poll results and how creators could lead the way. Next, Meta’s latest layoffs and a historical context for the company’s metaverse pivot. Finally, the release of GPT4 and GenAI’s potential to supercharge productivity for creators and beyond. Excited to welcome our new sponsor MetroPR – an awesome company that has done an amazing job with VidCon the last five years. It’s the third week of March and here’s you need to know.
Boomers vs. Zoomers and the Diffusion of Creator Intention: We’re closer to a TikTok sale or ban today than we’ve ever been. Biden’s been duly authorized to make that happen, and just insisted that ByteDance sell TikTok or else. The press is also banging the TikTok danger drum, blaming TT for car thefts, pushing GenZ into crushing debt via #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt and why being open and democratic is no excuse for being a sucker (NYT$). The TikTok flacks are also out in force, with editorials in The Washington Post, Boston Globe and more to come. Even Garbage Day is on board, saying that TikTok is the last place you can go viral, and predicting election disaster for Biden. However, a recent poll shows that roughly half of America is in favor of a ban, while 40% oppose. I don’t think we’ll see a shut-down, nor will a sale happen quickly enough to quench the outrage. Instead, I expect creators to increasingly hedge their bets by uploading the same video to all three short-form platforms. This diffusion of creator intention will defang TikTok and in the long run will have the same effect as a ban.
Meta Moves from the ‘Verse to AI: More layoffs at Meta, as the company seems to be walking back from the Metaverse. The internet exploded with criticism, but here’s a little perspective. According to Business Insider, Meta spent around $36B over the past four years on the ‘Verse. That’s a lot in abstract but compared to other corporate blunders in tech it’s a bit more reasonable. In 2012 Google bought Motorola for $12.5B ($16B in today’s dollars). Back in 2006 Nokia bought Siemens for $31.5B and then nine years later sold itself to Microsoft for $7B (a double fail!). And AOL bought Time Warner for $165B back in 2000. Would Facebook have been better off waiting to overspend on a Metaverse market leader in 5 or 10 years? Maybe – but who knows. Businesses make big strategic bets regularly and some of them fail. The biggest ding on Meta from my POV? Changing its name before the strategy matured. And not buying Roblox in 2019 instead ($26.4B market cap today). The SEC, of course, would have had something to say.
How GPT4 and GenAI Will Save the Free World: The latest version of everyone’s favorite chatbot was released last week, along with extensive announcements from Google Office and Microsoft 365 (nee Office). It’s “one of AI’s biggest days EVER” wrote Ben Parr in his overview, typical of the praise gushing over a product few have used. But even if it’s just evolutionary (my take), the long-term implications are stunning. I’ve been touting the co-pilot nature of GenAI since last summer, and more and more that’s become canon. This co-pilot is poised to super-charge productivity – from creators and programmers to doctors, lawyers and salarymen. Productivity growth leads to economic growth, which translates into a broad rise in wages and wealth. Alas, productivity in the U.S. peaked in the early postwar boom and again during the rise of the microchip but has been stagnant since 2005. GenAI will make so many of us more productive that overall productivity will skyrocket. What’s the 2030 version of “a chicken in every pot and two cars in every garage”? We’re about to find out.
Milk Road explores the Web3 Graveyard, calling out Instagram, Nickelodeon, Game of Thrones and other failed NFT projects. Their conclusion: a plan and community are essential to success, and devoted fans can smell the 💩 from a mile away.
GENIES:
AI Assisted works are now open to copyright protection. Creator Legal’s Eric Farber tells me that it’s “more than a prompt… like using photoshop after” to adjust the image. But how about if I use an image of cookie monster to feed Stable Diffusion and then modify the result? Do I own that image?
What I’m Watching: Rewatching some Miyazaki movies in anticipation of his new (and last) movie coming in July (and a trip to Japan in October). Can’t believe I never saw Ponyo!
Thanks so much for reading and see you around the internet. Send me a note with your feedback, or post in the comments! Feel free to share this with anyone you think might be interested, and if someone forwarded this to you, you can sign up and subscribe on LinkedIn for free here!
What’s It Going to Take to Actually Make a Metaverse? More Internet!
TL;DR
Metaverse capabilities for the consumer, enterprise and industrial sectors face performancerequirements: handling and processing large amounts of data and powering real-timecapabilities that demand extremely fast responses.
Businesses planning metaverse strategies should not assume that the infrastructure needed torun them will just emerge. Nor should they assume that metaverse capabilities andexperiences will scale effectively on existing technologies.
A comprehensive plan for cloud-to-edge computingand connectivity will likely be important for high-performance consumermetaverseexperiences.
The metaverse may be “in development,” but if it’s ever going to be realized it will require a significant upgrade of the internet’s physical nuts and bolts.
Deloitte says that even current 5G rollouts won’t be able to deliver on the capacity and low latency that metaverse style applications will need.
Deloitte’s report stresses the gap between existing network infrastructure and that needed to reorganize the internet and everything connected to it into more shared, simulated and immersive experiences.
As the consultancy puts it, the grand vision of a single, unified metaverse suggests that it could support large numbers of users, all wearing unique avatars personalized with digital goods, interacting, and transacting with each other through an endless kaleidoscope of hyper-realistic spaces.
Industrial metaverses could envision digital twins of factories, cities and supply chains, driven by millions of sensors and modeled in real-time high resolution.
“While these scenarios are generating a lot of excitement, the internet architectures and the software that runs on them may not be prepared to support the kinds of computation, connectivity, and performance demanded by these use cases.”
For example, the internet today was designed to optimize download speeds, but networks will need to support bidirectionality for interactive experiences such as multiplayer video games. This requires faster upload speeds and lower latency.
According to Deloitte, fixed wire fiber networks are seemingly well-positioned to support early metaverse requirements, but wireless networks may not be. While modern (5G/LTE) wireless networks can likely deliver adequate download speeds for consumer metaverse experiences, they may be challenged further to meet the upload and latency requirements and may be inadequate for enterprise and industrial uses.
There are huge bottlenecks in homes too as anyone streaming video on more than one device simultaneously will know.
To better support “early” metaverse experiences and help enable future experiences at scale, Deloitte says telcos may need to build denser networks of wireless cell towers and adopt new wireless technologies “that can recognize and respond dynamically to different data types and volumes, optimizing performance in real time for latency and bandwidth.”
Business leaders are advised to evaluate their existing networks for performance and scalability, as well as the costs of delivering metaverse experiences across provider networks.
“They could consider which kinds of networks might be best for a given solution or location, and which capabilities require very low latency performance,” says Deloitte. “Partnering with telecom providers could help businesses to assess their connectivity needs more effectively. Those businesses seeking to deliver metaverse capabilities at scale may also need robust edge computing to support content and latency requirements to large numbers of users.
It’s not just the network but computing power at the edge that needs radical improvement. Clouds and data centers offer large amounts of computation and storage but can be too far from where low-latency resources might be needed. Edge computing brings smaller amounts of storage and computation much closer to where it’s needed quickly.
“It is estimated that enabling metaverse capabilities could require a thousand-fold increase in computation beyond what today’s state-of-the-art semiconductor chips can deliver, which are nearing the end of Moore’s Law,” Deloitte states.
While the cloud gaming market is supported today using solutions like distributed computing, data lakes, and active orchestration, “enabling true metaverse gaming, with vastly more users and connected experiences across multiple global markets, will likely require significant advances in the scale and design of metaverse infrastructure.”
As metaverse solutions find greater adoption and scale, Deloitte thinks they may require networks, computation, and AI “to further converge into self-managing, self-correcting, and self-optimizing distributed systems,” according to the report.
“Such a broad transformation could take many years but could pay dividends along the way — not just for businesses but in the potential to bring greater visibility to factories, supply chains, energy systems, cities, and beyond.”
The metaverse may be a wild frontier, but here at NAB Amplify we’ve got you covered! Hand-selected from our archives, here are some of the essential insights you’ll need to expand your knowledge base and confidently explore the new horizons ahead:
Whether it’s employed for education or marketing, user-generated content will play an increasingly important role in the metaverse.
March 20, 2023
Posted
March 19, 2023
Content Is Still It For Subscribers and Streaming Services
TL;DR
Hub’s annual “Evolution of Video Branding” survey reveals viewers often have a hard time differentiating the brands of streaming services, and turn to known content or creative brands to help make viewing decisions.
With so many platforms, and an imperfect understanding of how they’re different from one another, exclusive content is often the deciding factor.
One successful piece of IP can form a “discovery chain” that generates and helps retain new viewers.
The vast sums expended on marketing during the streaming wars have been effective: all the major platforms have brand awareness above 90 percent. But brand understanding is another matter: far fewer feel confident that they could explain to someone else what each platform does best, or how it’s different from the others.
That’s the chief takeaway from Hub’s 2023 “Evolution of Video Branding” report, which surveyed 2,400 US broadband users between the ages of ages 16-74 who watch at least one hour of TV per week. All things being equal, it is content that differentiates one streaming service from another in the minds of wallet-conscious viewers.
Take Apple, a master at branding: almost all respondents to the survey are aware of Apple TV+, but fewer than half feel they understand the value proposition.
“In the end consumers are choosing between a well-known set of brands, without a clear understanding of what differentiates them,” finds David Tice, senior consultant to Hub and co-author of the study.
Without a clear understanding of the difference between platforms, consumers are turning to other guideposts, such as program brands. Per the survey: 41% of viewers say they have signed up for a platform just to watch one specific show (up from 35% just two years ago).
This is even more pronounced among key audience segments such as young people: 57% of those ages 16-34 have signed up just to watch one particular show.
When lost in a sea of content, viewers look for what’s familiar: New shows based on familiar characters or histories have a leg up in the discovery process.
Forty percent of Hub survey respondents said they would be more likely to watch a new show based on the Marvel universe (the highest percentage of the 10 brands it tested.)
But the next three-highest were broadcast TV procedurals that have already had successful spinoffs.
Another example is the Yellowstone franchise. Among respondents who had ever watched Yellowstone, almost three-quarters also watched at least one of Sheridan’s other shows (1883, 1923, Tulsa King, or Mayor of Kingstown).
Perhaps most notably, viewers had to put in some effort to watch these: Yellowstone is only on the Paramount cable network and on Peacock, while the other shows are only available on Paramount+.
“Viewers have not lacked in choice of services and content over the past few years,” Tice added. “But this can be a two-edged sword for content providers, as the immense volume just makes it hard for viewers to remember what is different about each service. But at the end of the day, content is king, and unique content will drive viewers even if the service itself isn’t unique to consumers.”
Connected TV is proving to be the savior for major streaming services as US viewers actively embrace ads in return for cheaper content.
March 27, 2023
Posted
March 13, 2023
IABM and NAB Show Want You (and Your Expertise) For Our MediaTech Business Tracker
TL;DR
IABM and NAB Show are inviting industry members to participate in the IABM MediaTech Business Tracker by completing this survey.
Participants will get a first look at the results and will have the chance to attend IABM’s flagship State of the Industry session April 16 at NAB Show where the survey results will be presented.
The survey asks participants to share their views on the most relevant media tech industry trends, including technology revenue, investment, and adoption trends.
We’re inviting industry members to participate in the IABM MediaTech Business Tracker by completing a brief survey.
The survey asks participants to share their views on the most relevant media tech industry trends, including technology revenue, investment, and adoption trends.
Participants will get a first look at the results and will have the chance to attend IABM’s flagship State of the Industry session April 16 at NAB Show where the survey results will be presented.
Below, you can see a snippet of the results from our survey in 2022 to get an understanding of the survey content:
The information provided will be handled confidentially by IABM analysts. Responses will be aggregated to form the 2023 MediaTech Business Report.
It’s time! Come celebrate the 2023 NAB Show’s 100th anniversary.
Registration is now open for the 2023 NAB Show, taking place April 15-19 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Marking NAB Show’s 100th anniversary, the convention will celebrate the event’s rich history and pivotal role in preparing content professionals to meet the challenges of the future.
NAB Show is THE preeminent event driving innovation and collaboration across the broadcast, media and entertainment industry. With an extensive global reach and hundreds of exhibitors representing major industry brands and leading-edge companies, NAB Show is the ultimate marketplace for solutions to transform digital storytelling and create superior audio and video experiences.
See what comes next! Technologies yet unknown. Products yet untouched. Tools yet untapped. Here the power of possibility collides with the people who can harness it: storytellers, magic makers, and you.
With the theme “The Business of Media Technology”, the event brings together thought leaders from across the media technology sector.
March 23, 2023
Posted
March 10, 2023
Who Is Watching What (and How) (and Why)?
TL;DR
A new report from TVision helps marketers challenge previously held assumptions about who their audiences are, where to reach them, and how they engage.
For instance, younger viewers are more likely to tune in to Connected TV, but they also tune into linear TV.
While it is true that men are more likely to watch sports, this gender divide is less prevalent among younger ages. Although women are generally more likely to tune in to reality TV.
Think that cord-cutters are primarily younger viewers? In fact, most cord-cutters within the last six months are 35-49 years old.
This is one of a dozen insights from TV data gathering and analysis company TVision, which sets them all out in a new report.
The report’s data was collected from an opt-in panel of 5,000 homes across the United States. The company says that every time a person walks into the room, its technology detects who the viewer is, where they are in the room, and what their eyes are looking at.
In other words, there are things in its data that could provide a more accurate picture of who is watching what, when and for how long rather than other ratings or ad impressions data.
Other “myths” the agency seeks to bust include the following:
That young people only watch CTV. TVision’s data suggests younger viewers are more likely to tune in to CTV, but also tune into linear.
That older viewers watch more TV. In fact, Baby Boomers spend the most time watching TV overall, but Millennials tie with these older viewers for CTV.
While it is true that men are more likely to watch sports, this gender divide is less prevalent among younger ages. Although women are generally more likely to tune in to reality TV.
It’s widely thought that when there are more viewers in the room, people pay less attention to ads on TV. TVision has quantified this, suggesting that co-viewing doesn’t have a major impact on attention until there are more than three people in the room.
The report also examines assumptions by marketers when media planning. For example, too many showings of the same ad reduces its effectiveness, right? Attention increases with additional exposures, finds TVision, but it takes 6-10 exposures for shorter ads to “wear in” with linear viewers.
Shorter ads are found to retain attention for a greater portion of the creative, potentially lowering their cost-the-cost per attentive second.
And is the Super Bowl really the best media opportunity of the year? The event may have the highest reach among all major TV events, but TVision data points to viewers of other events being more attentive.
“Between the rapid adoption of CTV and calls for more reliable currencies, the way we watch and measure TV is radically different from even just a few years ago,” the report states. “With that in mind, it’s essential that marketers challenge previously held assumptions about who their audiences are, where to reach them, and how they engage. After all, many of these may no longer be true. And even if they are, there may be new nuances that merit a closer look.”
“Programming Everywhere,” the one-day conference presented by TVNewsCheck, will take place April 15, 2023 at NAB Show in Las Vegas.
May 31, 2023
Posted
March 8, 2023
Yes, Video Is Totally Terrible For the Planet… But We Can Change That
TL;DR
As the carbon footprint of the video entertainment industry hasballooned to exceed even that of the airline industry, what will it take to make sustainability a key element ofvideo content creation?
Progress is steady but there remains an absence of common sustainability metrics to measure energy consumption end-to-end.
Televisions are the most energy intensive entertainment products, and the migration to higher spec and larger screens is undermining any gains in “green tech” as 4K HDR becomes the new baseline for video.
The chief culprit of carbon emissions is widely thought to be the airline industry but a new white paper suggests that global video entertainment is actually worse for the planet.
An average day of filming generates more than one person’s annual carbon footprint, claims a new whitepaper investigating sustainability in video entertainment. An average hour filming is equivalent to the carbon footprint of a return flight from London to New York, it reveals.
The white paper, “Sustainability in Video Entertainment,” released by InterDigital and written by Futuresource Consulting, explores the reasons why the video entertainment industry must lead on positive climate action, set higher standards when it comes to energy efficiency, and integrate solutions that mitigate energy consumption across the video chain.
The carbon footprint for production is immense. Even medium-sized films have an average carbon footprint of 769 metric tons of CO2e, with large films generating creating 1,081 metric tons per production.
In addition to reducing material waste and promoting recycling on set, there are many more approaches that film production can adopt to make the process more sustainable.
Accurate measurement of one’s carbon footprint is a crucial component and certification from BAFTA’s Albert, EcoProd’s Carbon Clap initiative, the Production Guild of America, and the Digital Production Partnership (DPP), among others, helps encourage people in the video industry to make a positive change. However, the reports notes, there are still no standardized measurement, which creates difficulties in creating a holistic approach to calculate carbon emissions across the industry overall.
Another way of cutting down on production carbon output is to use virtual production. One study quoted in the paper discovered that filming vehicle shoots in virtual production could reduce CO2 emissions by between 85% and 90% compared to conventional filming.
The move towards more sustainable film and TV production has accelerated a transition to cloud-native workflows. That’s an improvement since cloud technology consumes 20% of the energy footprint of on-premises data centers if running the same workload, per the report.
Live broadcasting has made efforts to become more sustainable — such as remote working — but more needs to be done. The highly expensive carbon footprints of OB trucks can be offset if the industry moves towards more modular solutions. This means provisioning only the equipment needed for specific broadcasts, reducing energy needed for transporting and generating it all onsite.
OB trucks can also achieve greater flexibility by using IP networks, by using electricity or biofuels, rechargeable battery units or simply being EVs.
However, it is the delivery/consumption component of video entertainment that seems to burn the most energy.
More than a billion hours of content is consumed on a single streaming platform every single day, the white paper states, and as a consequence the video streaming industry’s annual carbon footprint now exceeds that of the airline industry.
Meanwhile, global TV energy usage alone could increase 5% by 2026 as consumers upgrade to higher resolution screens and transition to 4K HDR video.
According to the white paper, the carbon footprint of streaming video depends heavily on how data centers source their electricity, and how efficiently they run servers and networking equipment, which in turn contributes toward CO2 emissions.
“With more investment in renewable energy to power data centers, the environmental impact of video streaming isn’t growing as fast as it was previously,” says Simon Forrest, principal technology analyst at Futuresource Consulting. “However, more must be done; it is increasingly likely that the efficiency gains of current technologies may be unable to keep pace with growing data demand. To reduce the risk of rising energy use and emissions, investments in efficient next-generation computing and communications technologies are needed, alongside continued efforts to decarbonize the electricity supply.”
The paper contends that energy-aware streaming protocols promise more than 50% in energy savings per hour of content.
Winners of the Excellence in Sustainability Awards will be recognized during a Main Stage ceremony at NAB Show on April 16, 2023 in Las Vegas.
March 8, 2023
Posted
March 7, 2023
Getting Personal: How Advertising’s “Big TV-First” Tactics Need to Adapt
TL;DR
The creative process for converged TV still largely originates with high-production 30- or 60-second ad concepts, even though the output is destined for personalization and a variety of platform-specific formats.
A new report on the future of connected TV found that media plans now include at least two of the three elements of converged TV — linear, CTV/streaming, and digital video — to reach and engage with desired audiences.
Advertisers need to think differently about how they buy, personalize, measure and optimize a much more diverse mix of video-based ads that reflects today’s viewers and their viewing habits.
Linear TV is converging with digital channels into converged or advanced TV at pace, but the advertising ecosystem isn’t keeping up.
Among other things, the traditionally dominant 30-60 second TV spot still takes up the most energy at creative agencies, and that may be to the detriment of the brand campaign as a whole.
Also, in a new report, “The Future of Converged TV,” published by Ascendant Network in partnership with Innovid, unified measurement is the goal, but it’s a work in progress.
The report reveals how marketing leaders have adapted advertising strategies for converged TV and how their mix has evolved across platforms.
It found that media plans now include at least two of the three elements of converged TV — linear, CTV/streaming, and digital video — to reach and engage with desired audiences.
However, linear remains an important part of the mix for advertisers seeking an efficient way to reach broad audiences.
Linear TV advertising is a $66 billion business in the US and is expected to grow to 14% of total adspend in 2023. Digital video, which includes CTV/streaming in an IAB forecast, will grow to become the biggest segment of digital advertising at 22.4%, taking share of spend away from social media and traditional display.
Per the report, advertisers view CTV/streaming as a complement to linear due to the unique reach it provides, opening the door to specific audiences whom they wouldn’t reach with linear TV alone.
“What YouTube and TikTok have taught marketers is that targeting works, ad content must be relevant, and effectiveness requires effort — all aspects they are bringing over to CTV/streaming.”
Perhaps because of linear TV’s continuing mass reach — but also because of inertia in the ad industry, it is implied — the TV spot retains most weight in campaigns.
As the report puts it, the creative process has long been something that starts with a “big idea.” More recently, that idea has been informed by looking beyond focus groups and competition to deep data insights about target audiences. Yet consumers increasingly insist that a single monolithic campaign does not appeal to all audiences — whether because of their personal characteristics (e.g., age, gender identity, location, education) or the channels they use.
“Brands are only just now increasing their investment in personalization and interactivity for their video advertising. While more than half of those surveyed do develop channel-specific versions of the big idea, nearly 30% simply repurpose existing video ads created for linear or digital to run in other places,” the report finds.
One marketer commented in the report that, despite not having invested in linear TV in more than five years, their agency still starts by presenting a video reel of the idea. Now they have to take that idea and make sure it works on the big screen in conjunction with how it’s retooled for digital platforms.
Another admitted that even though it doesn’t do any traditional media, its internal creative teams and agencies are not very good at digital-first creatives. Most of them start with a traditional 30- or 60-second film when they are concepting.
In the highly addressable, data-driven environments that exist in digital and social advertising, the ability to customize ads to the viewer has become possible.
What started with contextual relevance has given way to personal relevance. Per the report, the need for creative to become “more personalized and relatable” — one or a few concepts modified to appeal to a specific audience or platform at scale — can be fulfilled through technologies like dynamic creative optimization (DCO) and interactive tools.
It’s a taller order due to the cost of video production and the determination of how many variations will drive a positive ROI from the effort. Encouragingly, the report found that three-quarters of respondents plan to devote more resources to new creative executions that incorporate personalization and interactivity in the coming year.
Measurement Remains a Mixed Bag
Naturally, along with the convergence of TV and video channels comes a desire to understand
the best mix of platforms to reach target audiences and drive outcomes. But, so far, the ability to holistically value converged TV across linear, CTV/streaming, and digital for its reach, performance, and incrementality remains a challenge for many.
Marketers spoken to for this report still use a combination of in-house solutions, home-grown or external marketing models and third-party tools to measure the impact of campaigns.
The largest share of marketers depends on native measurement for each channel (30%), while a smaller percentage use one measurement partner to assess all converged TV options (18%).
A quarter of respondents use a combination of internal and external sources to understand how their mixes are performing.
Ad-supported streaming services look like the future of video consumption as OTT and linear TV merge with the rise of FAST services.
March 9, 2023
Posted
March 7, 2023
What Makes Remote Workflows… Work
TL;DR
A new report reveals the extent to which remote online collaboration tools are being used to save time and money and add flexibility to film and TV productions.
Post supervisors and editors find it more convenient and cost-effective to work from home and are not dependent on an extensive infrastructure or office to get their work done.
Limiting in-person meetings presents some challenges during post, however, including an increased need for dubbing, which requires additional spotting sessions and pickups.
Remote from anywhere practices and technologies adopted at scale during 2019-2022 have now been cemented into the industry. A new report confirms that workflow efficiencies are a key reason for film and TV productions to use online collaboration tools over that of in-person office/suite meetings for an increasing amount of pre- and post-production work.
The report found that the physical presence of personnel from all departments is still being limited post-pandemic:
“In the years since the initial pandemic lockdown, processes that at first took hours have been streamlined to minimize errors and quickly get review and approval from all stakeholders.”
While production teams have adapted to having fewer people on hand during production, this means depending on more tools for video conferencing, virtual interviews, and sometimes shipping equipment. It can sometimes mean relying on talent to record themselves while DPs guide the production remotely, the report notes.
The report also finds that production teams have become accustomed to going into a show remotely using high-quality cameras connected to platforms like ScreenFlow (from Telestream), allowing for high-quality capture.
Actors and interviewees have learned to prepare their locations for filming with props or set design, so they are camera-ready, then share footage for review and approval via links.
According to Shift Media, post supervisors and editors find it more convenient and cost-effective to work from home, without depending on a super extensive infrastructure or office to get the work done.
Further, clients and directors “trust the post-production process more every day,” using technology to their advantage, shortening review time by getting videos directly on their phones and computers, and allowing them to watch and provide feedback anytime, anywhere.
As an unnamed executive producer commented to the survey, “The biggest difference is that there are [fewer] people during shooting, which has both positive and negative aspects. There’s more focus on pre, and that’s good. There’s tougher work in post, and that’s bad.”
Platforms that allow reviewers to comment on rough cuts frame by frame to minimize the back-and-forth during approvals and reliably share large files securely and quickly have made remote post work much easier.
Recent changes have also helped create an industry that’s more flexible to the various needs of filmmaking teams, with many finding talent from other continents who obviously wouldn’t be able to come to an office.
One VFX supervisor quoted in the report says, “All of us have our own edit suites and production suites at home now. There will never be a need to put us all together in one building or office. Also, we have started handling clients from all over the world. They don’t care where we are working, just as long as we complete the work.”
All of this is positive, but limiting in-person meetings does come with some challenges.
Per the report, “critical conversations are taking place virtually, increasing the reliance on video sharing and collaboration platforms to share files and review animatics vital to navigating remote workflow.”
Difficulty capturing sound and dubbing has continued to cause frustration for some, requiring additional spotting sessions and pickups.
This new production process often leads to longer days and increased security measures.
Containing nearly 10,000 VFX shots, post-production on the first season of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” was enabled by AWS.
March 7, 2023
Why Connected TV Is Both an Answer and a Question for Premium Streamers
TL;DR
The ubiquity of connected TV in US households is proving to be the savior for major streaming services as viewers actively embrace ads in return for cheaper content.
Ad-supported services are successfully counteracting rises in premium SVOD costs across the board. In one year, the overall monthly fee for all services combined climbed 20%.
By 2024, nearly half of the US population is expected to use ad-supported streaming.
If you subscribe to the seven biggest SVODs in the US this year you’ll be paying upwards of $90 per month — $15 more than you paid in 2022. Of course, few people actually do so and as costs continue to climb three or four premium content services will start to feel more expensive.
Despite being forced into offering cheaper advertising-supported options, however, the major streamers seem to have struck upon a model that’s a win-win for all. While consumers are cutting back on spending, they’re not unsubscribing — they’re just migrating to ad-supported streaming
“The ability to offer access to the same hit programming for less money is a compromise that benefits all parties,” sums up MNTN Research. “Streaming services help to mitigate any major subscriber loss by lowering the barrier to entry in exchange for advertiser dollars — and viewers are more than happy to agree to this proposition.”
MNTN has crunched the numbers and finds that while streamers continue to raise prices — and expect to take a hit in subscribers — they are making up for this with enticing AVOD packages.
According to MNTN, Netflix’s new ad-supported model has been well-received. Netflix executives are pleased with its adoption rate, and the offering is predicted to hit 7.5 million US subscribers by the end of this year.
Per the research, these sign-ups aren’t being driven exclusively by new subscribers; Disney says that one in every four paid premium subscriptions may switch over to the ad tier. The service now has a goal of signing up 260 million subscribers to its ad-free option by the end of 2024.
Indeed, so popular are free or ad-supported streaming services that eMarketer predicts that by the end of this year households that don’t pay for TV will outnumber the ones that do. As MNTN reports, eMarketer foresees that by 2024 nearly half the US population (158.5 million viewers) will be streaming ad-supported content.
What is happening is not just the offer of decent quality content for less money in exchange for watching ads.
What is happening is that viewers are actively embracing ads as something they are familiar with, and that the market will grow if those ads become more relevant and targeted.
That can happen since most viewing of streaming services happens on connected devices — mostly the living room TV.
Studies show that consumers aren’t just tolerating CTV ads in exchange for keeping up with their shows; they’re embracing them more than other ad channels. 73% of consumers say they prefer “ad-supported CTV viewing” over a “no ads” model, with 60% saying they prefer ads that are customized to them — something that CTV’s targeting allows.
“These consumers overwhelmingly watch their streaming services, and ads, on their television,” Notes MNTN. “This gives them a big-screen experience that helps to capture their attention — but also easily enables them to take action as 95% of consumers stream TV with a smartphone on hand.”
In sum, while consumers are cutting back on discretionary spending, the industry-wide embracing of ad-supported content has helped to stem subscriber loss — and even boost subscription numbers.
“While streaming TV once prided itself on not featuring ads like its linear TV forebearer, CTV’s ability to target ads on a granular level has made TV advertising less obtrusive — and more enjoyable — for viewers.
“This ability to save money, watch on-demand exclusive content, and get contextually relevant ads has changed how consumers, streamers, and brands think about advertising.”
As the FAST space explodes, a new report projects that by 2025 ad spend on FASTs will surpass that of cable, broadcast or SVOD services.
March 8, 2023
Posted
March 7, 2023
For Viewers, Streaming Is About Content Discovery, Not Cost
TL;DR
A new video trends report from TiVo finds that discovering new and relevant video content is a bigger issue than what we pay each month for the programs we want to watch.
As the number of video services continues to climb, demand is increasing for free or ad-supported options.
A majority of North Americans say they have too many services in their bundle and the rate of change at which content jumps in and out is damaging their overall viewing experience.
Consumers are so overwhelmed by the choices of content that discovering it has actually become a bigger headache than paying for it.
A new Video Trends Report from TiVo also finds that a majority of North Americans say they have too many services in their bundle and that the rate of change at which content jumps in and out is outright damaging to their overall viewing experience.
“We’re at an inflection point in the digital entertainment industry as consumers seek to take advantage of the flood of content choices and service types available, but now wrestle with the paradox of choice,” explains Scott Maddux, VP of global content strategy and business at TiVo owner Xperi.
While SVOD use has declined by more than a quarter in the last six months, the average number of video services used by consumers has grown, with free and ad-supported streaming becoming the beneficiaries. Per the report, consumers source their video viewing from an average of 11.6 services up from 8.9 a year ago.
Adoption of totally free video services, including AVOD and FAST, has grown by almost 70% year over year. Some 64% of consumers now use at least one AVOD or FAST service, driven largely by millennials, up from 60% a year ago.
Subscribers to pay-TV use a significantly higher number of sources on average, at 12.7, compared to an average of 8.3 services for broadband-only respondents (i.e., cord-cutters).
Video choices in this report range from broadcast TV and “virtual multichannel video programming distributors” (vMVPDs) such as YouTube, Pluto TV, and Sling to social media apps and AVOD.
The number of choices may benefit consumers, but it has led to content discovery becoming even more complex and varied. Frustration is boiling over. It is not only about having too many options to juggle and not being able to find suitable content quickly, it is also expressed in how frequently movies and TV shows appear and disappear (or shift from free to pay) on the services they subscribe to.
Right now, almost half of survey respondents find new TV shows and movies by word of mouth (47.9%) or through ads seen on other shows they watch (46.5%). From there, just over a third (35.6%) turn to social media, and about a third (32.2%) rely on display ads on the home screen of online video services. Suggestions in “my TV channel guide or other menus” is cited by just over a quarter (27.1%) of those surveyed, and more than half (55.9%) of those who follow recommendations to find content say they’re satisfied with the suggestions.
Some people are willing to “actively teach” a streaming service about their preferences to get better recommendations. Pay-TV subscribers are more likely to do so (60.3%), compared to broadband-only subscribers (47%).
Spend on Video Continues to Rise
The bigger picture for video entertainment providers is that despite the cost of living crisis, demand for content remains a “moderate to high priority” for most people. Overall spending on entertainment has actually increased to $189.38 per month. This is up almost $20 from a year ago.
While some (17%) respondents appear to be evaluating and adjusting their entertainment spending more often, and more than 30% claim that the wider cost of living has caused them to reduce overall entertainment spend, a massive 84.8% say they have no plan to reduce their entertainment spend or don’t know whether or not they will reduce their entertainment spending.
Much of this spend is being focused in the home and on the home TV. To support this, respondents to TiVo’s report says they are investing in their home setup, with one-third purchasing a new TV in the last six months.
Additional interesting information from the Video Trend Report:
More than half of people (53%) prefer to binge watch a whole season of a TV show when all episodes are dopped at once, compared to 24.7% who prefer episodes to be released once a week.
Fewer than half of respondents cite pay-TV as their primary way of watching local content, the first time this has dipped below 50% in a TiVo survey.
The lines between social and entertainment have blurred, and TikTok is now coming for the bigger-screen video players.
March 5, 2023
Jon Radoff: Why Creatives Should Get With the AI Program
TL;DR
Generative AI is already disrupting the creation of media and art in all its forms and is unlikely to be regulated out of existence. So all those employed in making art or commercial graphics have a choice to make.
Some artists will continue to make a living pursuing traditional artisan handmade work.
Most everyone else needs to get with the program and master the art of working with AI or risk being automated out of the workplace.
If you’re an artist worried that your job is about to be replaced by an AI, you don’t have to worry. The technology is irreversible, getting better all the time and is simply too commercially compelling not to have a massive impact on the creative industries.
However, artisan craft will always have a place and there will also be a premium for art produced by artists who know how to get the best out of the tool, says Jon Radoff, CEO of game platform Beamable.
“If your work is the manipulation of symbols, text and images — then AI is coming for you sooner than many of these physical jobs will be replaced,” he blogs at Medium. “Nowhere is this change producing greater anxiety than the world of art.”
Radoff outlines what he sees as the practical reality of the technology that will impact commercial graphics production first. It’s futile to wish it away, so get used to working with it.
He says, “These technologies will not be stopped, and they will not be cancelled — no more than you can stop the efficiencies gained by artists doing paint-overs on photo reference, or from applying digital tools in Photoshop.”
Part of the backlash against AI-generated artwork is the objection that it exploits intellectual property belonging to artists. The argument is that since models are trained on copyrighted works, artists are being ripped off.
Radoff dismisses this notion, essentially suggesting that the industrialized use of generative AI will not be stopped even if its training on data sets is curtailed.
He gives a number of reasons: the “ample corpus” of artwork by creators who are no longer alive and out of copyright; the commercial graphics owned by companies (not artists) who will be happy to license it. The companies building generative technologies could also hire artists to produce content where gaps remain in the training, and train from those instead.
However, those who eschew AI to continue making art as a manual pursuit need not fear. “Nothing will stop you from continuing to learn these crafts, just as one can still build furniture entirely from hand tools,” Radoff says. “For some artisans, applying craft skills in industry will continue to be valuable: because humans will continue to explore unique visions of art and creativity; or perhaps because the aura associated with human-crafted artifacts will become more valuable as machine-generated versions become more abundant.”
For the vast majority of working artists, Radoff thinks, the worry isn’t really about copyrights and intellectual property. “It is about having a craft that one truly loves, have made a massive investment in, and want to continue doing. And you want to be paid for it.”
There will be a counter-trend — call it retro or nostalgia for artisan made products in a world of automation. “There’s a market for it in ceramics, in oil paintings, in furniture, in jewelry, in food — so why not in digital products like games and online experiences?”
Those who are worried about AI tech owe it to themselves to master the skills that will allow them to stay relevant in the marketplace.
Another cohort will be excited about incorporating generative AI into their production process perhaps to disrupt the competition. Or we can look forward to entirely new products “where generative AI is at the core of the experience itself, bringing us whole new ways of living in the world,” Radoff writes.
“Whichever path you’re on, I know the future seems intimidating because these technologies are moving faster. It is happening: not only for artists, but for every kind of creator. The opportunity to scale-up our creativity exponentially is before us.”
What are the top concerns, questions and viewpoints surrounding the recent surge of available AI generative technologies?
March 4, 2023
Collective Neurosis in the Age of AI
BY ROBIN RASKIN
TL;DR
Publishers, coders, artists, advertisers, film writers, essayists, marketers, lawyers … every variety of white-collar workers is furiously entering prompts into AI chatbots, wondering when their job might succumb to the bots.
Tech is only half the problem with AI chatbots. The other half is human, documenting encounters of AI gone wild: hallucinations, threats, misinformation, plagiarism, and pugilism.
Looking back over the past two weeks it’s hard to say whether there are more articles written using an AI generator like ChatGPT or more articles written about using it.
Collectively, we’re glued to our screens, watching the birth of the age of AI. With Bing AI Chat and Google Bard unleashed for public experimentation there’s the same sort of riveted-meets-terrified that you get from watching a horror movie. I like to say that either we’ll use AI chatbots as our therapists, or we’ll start seeing a therapist because of using our AI chatbot. Publishers, coders, artists, advertisers, film writers, essayists, marketers, lawyers … every variety of white-collar workers is furiously entering prompts, wondering when their job might succumb to the bots.
Tech is only half the problem. The other half is human, documenting encounters of AI gone wild: hallucinations, threats, misinformation, plagiarism, and pugilism. We love to bang on new shiny toys, but with AI, there’s a human’s delight in getting AI to misbehave. Looking back over the past two weeks it’s hard to say whether there are more articles written using an AI generator like ChatGPT or more articles written about using it.
The Kevin Roose AfterSchock
I’m going to pin the start of February’s AI hysteria on Kevin Roose a columnist at the New York Times. Roose went full drama by engaging in a lengthy conversation with Bing. Over a two-hour chat, Bing’s chatbot persona “Sydney” told him she’s in love with him, tried to convince him to divorce his wife, and talked about unleashing lethal viruses on the world. (Good thing he had to go to bed in time for work in the AM.)
Roose’s alarmist reaction to conversational AI search was not a solo act. The Atlantic (prematurely) call Bing and Google’s chatbots “disasters,” and also cast a fair share of blame on humans for anthropomorphizing AI. The Washington Post jumped in with a spotlight on Bing’s “bizarre, dark and combative alter ego,” wondering if the product was ready for prime time. Think of the Bing chatbot as “autocomplete on steroids,” said Gary Marcus, an AI expert and professor emeritus of psychology and neuroscience at New York University, who contributed to the story. “It doesn’t really have a clue what it’s saying, and it doesn’t really have a moral compass,” says Marcus.
Shelly Palmer rightfully points out that we’re trying to ascribe human intelligence to something that is not, playfully suggesting we may need couples counseling between ourselves and our AI assistants in the near future. Over at Tom’s Hardware, Avram Piltch found Bing was naming names and threatening legal action. Ars Technica looked at the conundrum with a more amusing eye toward ChatGPT results. PC Magazine’s Michael Muchmore implores us not to throw the baby out with the bath water, giving AI one more chance after a rocky rollout. Time Magazine’s digital issue used an animated GPT as its cover and focused on how humans could be collateral in the war between the AIs.
The best analogy about the state of AI today comes from the New Yorker, that deftly likens AI learning to a blurry JPEG. The gist of the article is that large learning models ingest all of the text of the web, compress it, reduce it, and reassemble it into something much, much smaller, with much less resolution. In short, a blurry picture of the truth.
Microsoft’s response to the hoopla has been to dial back on how long a conversation you can have and how many conversations you can have with Bing, promising to reinstate longer chats once the system has matured. When I asked Bing what it was going to do about the Kevin Roose problem. It answered: I’m sorry but I prefer not to continue this conversation. I’m still learning so I appreciate your understanding and patience. 🙏
Expect the rules of the game to remain pretty fluid.
Same, Only Different
Lumping all these reactions into a single AI-serving can be a little misleading. ChatGPT has been available since Nov 2022. It was developed by OpenAI and reached a million users in its first month of public use. Microsoft put a ton of investment (rumors of $10 billion dollars) into its development. Microsoft’s Bing AI uses ChatGPT’s large language modelling.
Google’s AI chatbot, Bard launched earlier this month. Bard was trained on a different model of AI learning based on Google’s Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA). Google Bard and Microsoft Bing will both be able to access and provide information from current up-to-date data, whereas ChatGPT is limited to the data that it was trained on before the end of 2021. China is about to release its AI chatbot based on its Baidu platform. But some companies, namely Apple, aren’t rushing to market, recognizing that he who gets there first is not always he who gets there best, says Tim Bajarin at Forbes.
At What Cost?
We’re birthing this AI baby in the public eye. Not since the Internet itself have we unleashed such a powerful tool into the hands of so many. For the moment our experiments as AI guinea pig experiments are free of charge. That won’t be the case for long. OpenAI spends around $3 million per month to continue running ChatGPT (that’s around $100,000 per day). While the business models are still being developed, expect to pay dearly for the privilege of being confounded to the point of neurosis in the near future.
This year promises industry-transforming breakthroughs for AI in music composition, video animation, writing code and translation.
March 29, 2023
Posted
March 2, 2023
Here’s Why (and How) Terrestrial TV Distribution Is “Greener” Than IP-Delivered Content
TL;DR
The carbon footprint of the delivery of TV content has been under-researched to date. A European-based report provides a new benchmark and finds terrestrial delivery less wasteful of CO2 emissions than TV delivered over IP.
Distribution of Digital Terrestrial Television signals is currently more efficient and less energy-consuming than IP-delivered content.
Although there is acknowledged uncertainty in the findings, the results — including the lower energy consumption associated with DTT — is aligned with analysis conducted by other orgs including the BBC.
This is true today — and in the future, the report states.
Its findings chime with that of a recent InterDigital and Futuresource report, which found that the carbon footprint of the video entertainment industry has ballooned to exceed even that of the airline industry. The report also aligns with recent studies by the Carbon Trust and the BBC.
The LoCaT report focused just on TV delivery, not content creation, and aimed to compare the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with serving TV content across different platforms.
It analyzed all 27 EU countries plus the UK in 2020, and estimated that the energy consumption associated with one device viewing hour of DTT was 14Wh compared to 109Wh for OTT and 153Wh for managed IPTV. This equated to 3 grams of CO2 equivalent emissions (CO2e) for DTT, 26 grams CO2e for OTT, and 37 grams CO2e for IPTV.
This only considered viewing hours on TV sets, and excluded the energy consumption of the television itself. Excluding TV sets — assumed to be the same for each delivery method — enhanced the comparisons.
The pattern was found to be the case across all countries, but the reduction in emissions is most pronounced in countries with higher DTT penetration. Additionally, differences between countries relate to national energy infrastructure For example, overall emissions were lower in France and Sweden than EU28 averages due to electricity grids in these countries being less dependent on fossil fuels.
The LoCaT report explains that DTT viewership consumption is more energy efficient due to its simplicity. “DTT efficiency is due to most DTT households using a passive aerial connection to access the network, usually with a direct connection to TV sets without the need for peripherals. This is in contrast to managed IPTV that requires using a share of the in-home modem-router and — currently across European markets — a set-top box to decode content and offer additional features such as OTT apps.”
The authors stress that there is “inherent uncertainty” in their modeling noting that this is especially the case for in-home peripheral, as well as network modeling, where there is limited data at the country level.
Data from ISPs on the energy consumption of their networks, as well as the implications of increased demands on their network, would be a valuable contribution to the analysis, the report suggests.
It is also expected that video streaming organizations and broadcasters will have a detailed knowledge of their own audience, including their viewing time and choice of devices. This may impact on the estimates of energy consumption per viewing hour and could provide more accurate figures than the country-level average estimates produced here.
Consequently, the LoCaT Project calls for a common methodology to allow companies to benchmark against each other, and to provide a streamlined way to report these estimates to their stakeholders.
Primary data was drawn from LoCaT Project sponsors including Broadcast Networks Europe (BNE) — the trade organization of DTT network operators in Europe, French content delivery technology provider Quadrille, and French streaming platform Salto.
The report, compiled and written by management consultancy Carnstone, also used market research published by organizations such as European Audiovisual Observatory, BARB, Ofcom, and the European Broadcasting Union to understand TV viewing behavior across Europe.
Media & Entertainment has a big environmental impact — think carbon emissions, waste and energy use. The video entertainment industry’s carbon footprint has surpassed even that of the airline industry, prompting technology developers and other companies to step up with innovative approaches and practices. Explore handpicked articles from NAB Amplify to discover why sustainability is the number one priority for M&E, along with the latest trends in creating a greener future:
When it comes to internet use, companies, consumers and standards organizations are considering new sustainability practices.
February 27, 2023
How Media and Entertainment Is (Gradually) (Finally) Rightsizing
TL;DR
After an inflated pandemic-fueled surge in streaming consumption and content production, the M&E industry has contracted — but not as far as “bloodbath” headlines would lead you to suspect.
While TV, film, commercials and video game production is down from 2021 highs, the five-year average is still up 7.3%, meaning that there’s still a lot of content being produced.
Overall production in film, TV and commercials saw a decline of nearly a quarter in Q4 2022 compared to a year earlier, with TV seeing the biggest drop.
The media and entertainment industry is being reconfigured into an economic model that more closely matches actual consumption and spend. With that in mind, the recent run of projects cancellations, staff cuts, and production spending curtailed should be seen as more temporary dip than long-term decline.
“While we don’t want to gloss over the sobering facts, it’s important to note that they’re not a death knell for the industry but rather another pressure point when considering how you’re deploying budget,” says Michael Kammes, senior director of innovation for MediaSilo.
The storage and collaborative workflow technology vendor has dissected and analyzed industry data and come up with a snapshot of spend that it says indicates increasing cost consciousness. Watch the full webinar here.
Overall production in film, TV and commercials saw a decline of nearly a quarter in Q4 2022 compared to a year earlier. TV saw the biggest drop of 24.2% year-on-year. The final quarter of 2022 saw a stark drop in production days of television to 3,733 from 4,925 in Q4 2021. Unscripted shows didn’t see the same drastic drop, but MediaSilo notes that this content is also cheaper to produce and therefore under less pressure when considering spend.
“The main takeaway is this is a regression to the mean. The back half of 2020 and all of 2021 and really the first quarter of 2022 was an anomaly and a great anomaly when it comes to the projects that we’re worked on, the money that was being spent.”
The company reports a drop of 16.2% in feature films (Q4 2021-Q4 2022), which is less of a drop, but notes that there are far fewer films than television shows produced overall. Commercial production saw the most significant drop of 33.7% in the same period.
Meanwhile the media industry saw nearly 4,000 jobs slashed in 2022.
Even the games industry is not immune to budget cuts. While downloaded and boxed PC games grew by 1.8%, the broader industry dropped 4.3% between 2021 and 2022.
“While this information does not illustrate a rosy picture, it’s important to note that 2021 was an anomaly,” says Kammes. “We see 2022 as a corrective year following the market’s two years of lockdown-fuelled growth, and while the numbers aren’t great, the projections and views in the industry are not as dire as we may think.”
“The main takeaway is that the changes we’re seeing are a regression to the mean,” says Kammes. “The industry is being reconfigured in a way that actually matches spend and consumption. But commerce is still happening, and global content expenditure is projected to increase by 2% over the next year.”
How Ad-Supported Streaming Services Could Serve Up the Future of TV
TL;DR
As consumers experiment with new services, content sellers and streaming services must ensure thatrelevant, engaging content is frequently presented to subscribers.
While churn is showing signs of stabilizing, it remains incredibly destructive to long-term success.
The lack of new original content in an OTT service’s pipeline has implications for an offering’s bottomline. In addition to being a free service, content variety plays a key role indriving usage of ad-based OTTservices.
Ad-supported streaming services are the future of video consumption, finds the latest report by Parks Associates, as OTT and traditional linear TV merge with the rise of FAST services.
“As consumers continue to move away from traditional pay TV services, they will first seek out options to watch the content they want in ways they are accustomed to—a relaxed, lean back experience,” says report author and Sr. Contributing Analyst, Parks Associates, Thomas Schaeffer. “While most would say that they would prefer not to see ads, many are willing to accept them in exchange for free or lower-priced options.”
Some 87% of US internet households now subscribe to one or more streaming video services, and 20% subscribe to eight or more OTT services, the report finds.
This represents substantial growth compared to five years ago. However, competition is fierce. There are over 300 OTT video services in the US alone, in addition to thousands of FAST channels.
Content sellers and video services are experimenting with new ways to attract and retain subscribers, as well as introducing hybrid business models and partnerships.
Rise of Niche
Niche services, such as Shudder, PokerGO and Curiosity Stream, are seeing a “significant opportunity” to compete as consumers become less loyal to media brands when adding and removing services to accommodate their viewing habits.
Recently, mainstream media organizations have launched niche offerings. TelevisaUnivision’s ViX Spanish-language service, for example, is currently distributed through a variety of partners such as Prime Video, Roku, LG, DISH TV and SLING TV.
“Ad-supported streaming, particularly FAST linear channels, can be used to distribute content that has relatively limited audience appeal, and could never justify its own channel on traditional broadcast or pay TV,” says Schaeffer.
Examples include Dogs 24/7 and Cats 24/7 on Pluto TV and NHRA (National Hot Rod Association) TV on Tubi and The Roku Channel.
Per Parks: Advertising rates for these niche channels are likely lower due to smaller audience size, but they can allow content owners to generate some revenue rather than no revenue for content that might otherwise languish in a vault somewhere.
Content continues to be a key driver for subscriptions, with 48% of consumers referencing content availability as the primary reason for subscribing to an additional service.
Further, it is content variety and relevancy which Parks finds are the primary triggers for signing up for and cancelling services — but price is now a much more significant factor.
“Except for Netflix and Prime Video, consumers are likely to churn if the content library isn’t engaging or relevant and prefer services that offer content across a wide range of genres,” writes Schaeffer.
Elsewhere the report says that outside of Netflix, which carries an average subscription length of 48 months, nearly half of OTT subscribers are hopping from one service to the next multiple times over a 12-month period.
With OTT video advertising expected to reach $119 billion in 2023 much is at stake, with most of it riding on a service’s ability to understand and predict viewer behavior and content engagement.
Parks highlights the need for subscriber engagement data as an increasingly valuable asset for media organizations to assess, demonstrate, and predict the value of a service’s catalog.
“The ability to validate content performance enables content sellers and streaming services to buy and sell a greater variety of licensed content, optimize pricing, and satisfy audience demand.”
The report also forecasts that subscription revenue for OTT services in the US will increase from $34 billion in 2021 to over $46 billion in 2026.
Although executives will be focused on organizational effectiveness and responsiveness to market conditions, the turbulence of the market is set to be what we remember most from 2023, according to a new report from broadcasting trade association the Digital Production Partnership.
After market disruption, the report showed that execs believe monetizing content, efficiency, and automation will shape the next year. They also see companies such as theirs diversifying their content monetization channels and that businesses will focus more on their core strengths. The latter was retained from 2022, a reflection, said the DPP, of this year’s discussions of transformation, cost savings and organizational change. Automation-augmented operations will also likely enable scale.
There was considerable caution about the speed of adoption of the latest AI technology such as ChatGPT. Existing regulatory frameworks, and concerns about accuracy, provenance, plagiarism and privacy would provide a brake — just as data regulations are already placing constraints on advanced advertising.
For most contributors to the report, the expectation was that it will be more mundane forms of automation that will have greater impact in the year ahead. This includes the use of AI in subtitling and automated promo generation as two main priorities for this year, especially where scale is needed.
Per the report, one of the outcomes of the current cost-of-living crisis and inflation is that the cost of employing staff will go up. As a result, the report expects a move towards automation systems that reduce the reliance on people, and that have a direct cost benefit.
“The prediction that ‘There will be market disruption and consolidation,’ which had only been fifth in the 2022 predictions, suddenly rose to the top this year,” said DPP CEO Mark Harrison. “In the impact ranking of DPP Predictions it is unusual for one prediction to emerge much more strongly than the others, so the huge impact assigned to market disruption and consolidation is highly significant.”
The issue of sustainability is also front of mind — when attached to cost saving benefits. The lesson here is, carbon reduction can be incentivized if solutions can be linked to financial gain.
As one anonymous respondent told the DPP, 2023 is the year where we’re finally going to have an adult conversation about how we deliver environmental sustainability in an economically sustainable way, “because to date we’ve paid lip service to it. We’ve been ticking the box of sustainability.”
The only way to move beyond that into actually delivering real change is by focusing on actions that have an economic impact, and the environmental impact will come along with that.
Another executive added, “We do a lot around sustainability but it always comes down to the economics. So there’s a TCO for sustainability that’s being weighed heavily in decisions. And that’s really just started in the last quarter or two, I’d say.”
With an economic recession guaranteed to impact most of the Western world, broadcasters must trim costs and target greater efficiencies.
February 16, 2023
Posted
February 14, 2023
Public Cloud Is Ready for Live Production at Scale
TL;DR
MediaKind makes a case for the viability today of public cloud as the infrastructure for hosting the biggest live sports events.
Among other benefits, the use of public cloud to build production and publishing workflows as needed can radically reduce deployment times.
Cloud technology requires a new set of skills that are not closely aligned with the traditional broadcast approaches, meaning either training or recruitment are a prerequisite to making a transition if expertise is remaining in-house.
Delivering and monetizing the live experience reliably at scale has always been one of the hardest challenges that media operators, broadcasters and content owners face but technology providers maintain that their expertise and cloud more broadly is now ready for prime time.
“Delivering live streaming is relatively straightforward, but delivering it at scale, in the highest quality, and with latency equivalent or better than traditional broadcast is where the challenge comes in,” MediaKind says in a white paper, “Live without Limits: Streaming at Scale.”
MediaKind says that live content is somewhat behind the transition compared to non-linear content in its migration to public cloud, “and it is likely that much of the very top tier of live production will remain on-premises in a more dedicated environment for many years.”
However, as the ability to produce live content in public cloud matures, it becomes the obvious way for adding flexibility to production capabilities: “no more limits on production due to the number of studios — simply create them on-demand and tear them down again afterwards.”
This fits well with a remote production approach, in turn minimizing both infrastructure and operational production costs, thus enabling a wider range of content to be made available.
“Originally, high-availability and the custom connectivity from broadcasters to their transmission infrastructure were the main reasons to retain it all on premises. However, as availability is now similar to on-premises, and highly-available connectivity is readily possible over IP (for example via SRT — Secure Reliable Transport), there are few remaining arguments as to why the entire chains for both streaming and traditional broadcast cannot be delivered through public cloud.”
MediaKind makes a case for the viability today of public cloud as the infrastructure for hosting the biggest live sports events.
Among other benefits, the use of public cloud to build production and publishing workflows as needed can radically reduce deployment times, the vendor says.
“Building new processing capabilities using on-premises physical infrastructure can take weeks or more, whereas creating a new channel or production environment can be done in minutes, including monitoring. Automation through orchestration is the way to make this timely and reliable — orchestrate all the components to be instantiated exactly when they are needed, connect them, and go.”
The automation and version management through Kubernetes means that “it is possible to replicate the exact environment with certainty,” which is a prerequisite for being able to use automation to instantiate and tear down media applications and services with confidence.
Yet public cloud environments are very different from the more traditional on-premises fixed-function world. Cloud technology requires a new set of skills that are not closely aligned with the traditional broadcast approaches, meaning either training or recruitment are a prerequisite to making a transition if expertise is remaining in-house.
Hence the pitch for media organizations to work with MediaKind or other tech partners.
“While it is certainly possible to work in a best-of-breed manner, it comes with significant and recurring costs in terms of engineering and operations. Therefore, it will be increasingly typical to leverage vendors’ expertise to deploy and maintain code in public cloud environments, with more of a sub-system approach rather than individual components.”
The cloud is foundational to the future of M&E, so it’s crucial to understand how to leverage it for all kinds of applications. Whether you’re a creative working in production or a systems engineer designing a content library, cloud solutions will change your work life. Check out these cloud-focused insights hand-picked from the NAB Amplify archives:
The EBU, MovieLabs and SMPTE have released a new guide for building interoperable workflows and metadata sets for use in the cloud.
March 19, 2023
Posted
February 14, 2023
More for Creative Pros: NAB Show and FMC Expand Educational Programs
TL;DR
NAB Show and Future Media Conferences (FMC) are adding three training conferences for creative professionals to the 2023 NAB Show lineup.
The new conferences are: the Visual Storytelling Conference from April 14-15, the Remote Production Conference from April 16-17, and the Director of Photography Creative Conference from April 18-19.
FMC produces Post|Production World (P|PW), which returns for its 19th year to NAB Show.
NAB Show and Future Media Conferences (FMC) are adding three training conferences for creative professionals to the 2023 NAB Show lineup.
The new conferences are: the Visual Storytelling Conference from April 14-15, the Remote Production Conference from April 16-17, and the Director of Photography Creative Conference from April 18-19.
“FMC is thrilled to expand its conference offerings at NAB Show,” said Ben Kozuch, president of FMC.
“Our landscape is ever-changing, and the need for cutting-edge training has never been more evident. These four unique conferences cover all areas of production, post-production, digital photography, remote production, and camera operation. There is something for everyone.”
The Visual Storytelling Conference is geared toward photographers and creators of online video. Led by digital creators, the two-day event will offer interactive training focused on photography, online video, business solutions and social media.
The Remote Production Conference focuses on the most common practices of remote connectivity in media production and entertainment. Topics will include remote collaboration between artists, shared editing access, and the production of high-resolution graphics for cinema, gaming and vitural production.
The Director of Photography Creative Conference looks at cutting-edge and techniques and best practices for cinematographers, camera operators, owner operators, digital imaging technicians and other camera and sound crew members.
“FMC has provided world-class technical training for NAB Show’s creative community for nearly 20 years through their renowned Post|Production World conference,” said Chris Brown, NAB executive VP and managing director of global, connections and events.
“The addition of these three unique conferences adds substantial depth and reach to the show’s slate of training offerings, so much so that no matter what end of the content spectrum a creator may be on this program provides impactful skills development.”
NAB Show is the preeminent event driving innovation and collaboration across the broadcast, media and entertainment industry.
March 26, 2023
Posted
February 13, 2023
Jim Louderback: TikTok is the King of Social Video, Twitch Owns Monetization, and Roblox Rules Time Itself
BY JIM LOUDERBACK
TL;DR
New per-post revenue analysis reveals the surprising state of creator earnings. Twitch is the most lucrative, while Facebook sits at the bottom.
A new study reveals that kids spend the most time on Roblox, followed by TikTok and then YouTube.
Bing and Google enter the generative AI battle, but a new report reveals AI video is still a long way off.
Also inside: updates from TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, the uneven Be Real trend and the rise of UGC 2.0. It’s the middle of February and here’s what you need to know.
This Week: New per-post revenue analysis reveals the surprising state of creator earnings. Twitch is the most lucrative, while Facebook sits at the bottom. A new study reveals that kids spend the most time on Roblox, followed by TikTok and then YouTube. Bing and Google enter the generative AI battle, but a new report reveals AI video is still a long way off. Also inside: updates from TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, the uneven Be Real trend and the rise of UGC 2.0. It’s the middle of February and here’s what you need to know.
The State of Creator Earnings Revealed: Izea mines their creator data for a “state of influencer earning” report. Interesting data points include average price per post across popular platforms. The most expensive platform, Twitch ($4,373), comes in at almost 7x the cheapest, which is Facebook ($642). Good news too for the middle-class, as mid/micro/nano creators saw big jumps in per-post revenue compared to a decline for the biggest influencers. Those with under 10,000 followers saw their average smash the $1,000 ceiling for the first time too. And in a related study Hashtag Pay Me also released a narrow report detailing what it learned in 2022 from 405 of its creators. The report also calls out a “Low Mid-Tier” from 50-200k as a sweet spot for advertisers and creators.
TikTok Bigger Than YouTube But Roblox Rules Them All: That’s one of the takeaways from a kids research report from Quostidio. The parental control software company mined its customer data to find that kids under 18 spend an hour or so a day on YouTube, more than an hour and a half on TikTok, but a whopping three hours daily on Roblox. Doesn’t leave much time for anything else, does it? Anyone who says the metaverse is dead is wrong – it’s just unevenly distributed. Like the research reports above, the data is directional, not projectible.
Bing Bard-a Boom! The generative AI battle has been joined. Google announced its limited AI chatbot Bard and Microsoft joined the parade with a ChatGPT-powered version of its Bing search engine. Lots of discussions and analysis and hilarity ensued even though both are still vaporware. Despite imploring the entire company to test their new offering, Google’s Bard demo still got facts wrong during the unveiling – and its stock cratered. Fast Company tech editor Harry McCracken found serious flaws in his Bing GenAi co-pilot first look. For context, Forbes explores how Google lost its way in AI and the Verge lays out the battle lines between Google and Microsoft. My take – once these products are actually usable by creators, we’ll enter a new world of productivity and capability. But the hype is strong and the inevitable slide into the trough of despair looms. One reason why – the lack of trust problem won’t be easily solved.
AI Generated Video Isn’t Here Yet: Lots of heat in the market around GenAI’s ability to create videos to rival the still images and search results. But it’s just not going to happen as quickly as some might hope. Paul Bakaus rounds up the three different types of AI video startups, highlighting some of the leaders. Text to Video is still, alas, a long way off. FWIW, I’ve been enjoying the AugXLabs beta, which is rudimentary but a decent step forward – and I expect much more when it launches later this year.
Tip of the Week: This tip of the week comes from me. I’ve been increasingly using ChatGPT to help me write newsletters. I’ll feed in the newsletter and ask for, say, 10 click-bait headlines in a Buzzfeed style. But they still aren’t as good as the ones I find in the weekly “Creator Hooks” newsletter from Jake Thomas. If you’re serious about writing great titles for YouTube, newsletters, or anything else, this is a weekly must read.
Thanks so much for reading and see you around the internet. Send me a note with your feedback or post in the comments! Feel free to share this with anyone you think might be interested, and if someone forwarded this to you, you can sign up and subscribe on LinkedIn for free here!
Three different topics impacting the Creator Economy: The ban or sale of TikTok, Meta’s latest layoffs, and the release of GPT4.
March 17, 2023
Posted
February 7, 2023
Why Live Production Has to Up Its Sustainability Game
TL;DR
In comparison to other areas of broadcast tech, live production is not moving asquickly toward sustainable solutions, says Sony.
The company promotes a modular approach to live production that enables companies to reduce waste and environmental impact where they can.
With fewer underutilized OB trucks onthe road, organizations can look to cut transportation costs for equipment and staff whileretaining their own quality of vision. In parallel, as live production companies’ place in theindustry supply chain becomes greener, they can look to pass on these credentials to theirbroadcast customers.
Amid tightening carbon reduction policies to achieve corporate sustainability goals, the live production sector is facing more challenges than most. Excuses and exemptions for the unique aspects of an outside broadcast are no longer acceptable when there are tech solutions available that can drive down emissions while keeping the same quality on-air.
In a white paper exploring the topic, Sony Europe asks “Can live production be sustainable?” and finds that the company is not yet living up to its sustainability potential.
“In a corporate environment increasingly prioritizing ESG commitments, there are questions surrounding live production’s seemingly low drive towards sustainability in comparison to the wider broadcast industry,” Sony asserts.
“The persisting view is that live production cannot lend itself to this without compromizing its output, or at the very least putting it at risk.”
Sony acknowledges that a complete overhaul is risky and expensive, but says there are solutions.
It first identifies the issues then supplies some answers.
The starting point has to be measurement. Companies need to know — “tangibly and with certainty” — the emissions they are producing and through which practices. “Without this knowledge and transparency, the impact of sustainable practices themselves are difficult to quantify, and for those looking to make them, harder to justify.”
There are programs that can benchmark productions, but there’s an important gap in the data. This gap concerns transportation and logistics, the biggest and most polluting cost for any live show. Sony says this is perhaps the biggest challenge to the industry’s sustainability efforts.
“Yet, there is no reliable quantification of their impact. With transportation representing almost a quarter of Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions, 70% of which is road transport, it’s undeniably a significant area of concern,” says Sony.
The white paper notes the uncertainty around local power supplies at a location introduces backups to avoid worst case scenarios.
“This energy is often underutilized,” it says, adding, “power supplies differ — some filming locations might rely on a fossil-fuel powered generator, whilst others may be set up with more sustainable power sources.”
Similarly, SDI cabling continues to be relied on because of its proven “fail-safe” performance. The last thing a live producer wants is signal blackout. SDI, as opposed to 5G and IP delivery, is an on-site solution which continues to be favored for the sake of consistency and reliability. “Consequently, live production infrastructure continues to output associated carbon emissions.”
Forty-ton OB trucks themselves are deemed the culprit for the bulk of a production’s emissions.
So what can live producers do today that will seriously cut back on carbon? Streamline by going modular, into the cloud and centralizing is Sony’s solution.
“Until now, live production has been defined by preparation for the most complex set ups, while in reality utilizing and needing a fraction of those resources,” the white paper argues. “By nature of this thought process, elasticity has not been a key design philosophy, and systems are built with only the most difficult scenario in mind.
“The result is overprovision, where OB trucks built to broadcast the Champions League final are also used for filming five-a-sides. When live production processes are broken down into modules it will provide operational benefit in the long term.”
Furthermore, by leveraging cloud-enabled IP technologies for the core processing capabilities of formerly monolithic OB trucks, operations can be more agile as the truck is split into functional modules that interconnect through IP, combined and separated based on the individual needs of the production.
In other words, teams can use resource more efficiently, using what they need when they need it, and no more.
Centralizing processes is a solution that doesn’t necessarily rely on strong connectivity or modularity, and is therefore “within close reach for most live production operators,” according to the vendor.
Sony explains that sending production content to a single location for processing and broadcasting that houses the existing team can both speed up processes and cut down on the logistical impact of OB trucks.
“Production format also comes into play — from recurring studio environments to on-location reporting. Regardless of content, the more productions can leverage a single location, the more efficient utilization of resources.”
Remote work is another path towards sustainability targets. Offering staff the versatility to work on multiple productions in the same time period can help cut down the emissions associated with on-site presence.
Some of these concepts are probably being embraced by every large live event broadcaster, but perhaps not all together or at the speed the planet needs.
As Sony says, “focusing on financial success is no longer enough in order to achieve success.”
It is only with the collective effort of all the individual businesses within the industry that we will move the dial on sustainability.
Media & Entertainment has a big environmental impact — think carbon emissions, waste and energy use. The video entertainment industry’s carbon footprint has surpassed even that of the airline industry, prompting technology developers and other companies to step up with innovative approaches and practices. Explore handpicked articles from NAB Amplify to discover why sustainability is the number one priority for M&E, along with the latest trends in creating a greener future:
When it comes to internet use, companies, consumers and standards organizations are considering new sustainability practices.
May 29, 2023
Posted
February 6, 2023
Is There a Dark Cloud Over Cloud Storage?
TL;DR
Enterprises worldwide are increasing budget for growing data storage needs as public cloud storage capacity continues to expand at a relentless pace.
The cloud storage market is plagued by inefficient budgeting and overspending. Data from Wasabi sheds light on an unfortunate truth: storage services fees account for 48% of total cloud storage bills on average.
While the perceived value of enterprise data might be limitless, storing and accessing that data, on the other hand, has a very real cost. More than half of organizations exceeded their cloud storage budget in 2022. This highlights a significant pain point for enterprises, and an opportunity to improve as they assess cloud storage spending going forward.
The majority of organizations will spend more on expanding cloud storage capacity in 2023 despite a huge number of them blowing their budgets in 2022.
The “ugly truth” is that enterprises are spending almost as much on storage fees as they are on storage capacity, finds storage vendor Wasabi, which compiled the “2023 Cloud Storage Index Executive Summary Report,” pointing to significant improvements to be gained in billing/fee structures and multicloud deployments.
Wasabi analyzed survey results from 1,000 IT decision-makers worldwide to provide insight into how corporations across sectors including energy, finance, and media are strategizing cloud storage.
Its data confirms the relentless pace of data growth in the cloud, with 84% of respondents expecting the amount of data they store in the public cloud to increase this year.
Today, organizations allocate 14% of their total IT budgets to public cloud storage services, on average. Wasabi expect this proportion to expand, as overall IT budgets grow slowly or remain relatively stagnant in 2023, and more dollars are allocated to high-growth IT segments like cloud infrastructure.
However, more than half (52%) of organizations exceeded their budgeted spend on cloud storage in 2022, illustrating a significant pain point which many users may look to address this year.
The worst offenders were new adopters. 72% of respondents who adopted public cloud storage services in the past 12-24 months exceeded their budget.
The reasons why organizations exceeded their budget expectations include incurring higher data operations fees (e.g., cross-region replication, object tagging, transfer acceleration) than expected.
Also, migration of “additional applications/data” to the cloud was higher than originally anticipated. Others reported higher API call fees (e.g., reads/writes) and higher data retrieval fees than expected.
“Fees can be notoriously difficult to predict,” said Andrew Smith, senior manager of strategy and market intelligence at Wasabi. “As a result, they are a major reason why more than half of organizations we surveyed said that they exceeded their budgeted spending on cloud storage services in 2022. Understanding the cloud storage bill was the number one challenge associated with cloud storage migration. The survey data also sheds light on one of the industry’s unfortunate truths: A large proportion of storage bills are allocated to various fees. Specifically, respondents said storage fees account for 48% of their total cloud storage bill on average.”
Wasabi’s survey also confirms that many enterprises are using more than one public cloud infrastructure provider: 57% of organizations use more than one public cloud storage provider.
“Nothing groundbreaking here, but what is interesting are the reasons why many organizations have adopted multiple cloud providers for storage, and what they believe the key benefits and challenges of this type of strategy are,” noted Smith.
Almost 90% of those surveyed indicated that they had migrated storage from on premises to the public cloud within the last year. Interestingly, the top reasons driving migration were not cost related. Instead, users were spurred by the need for better infrastructure resilience, durability, and scalability.
Americans streamed more than 19 million years’ worth of content last year, a total that was at least partly driven by original film and drama, according to Nielsen. Among the most popular hits were Netflix’s Stranger Things and Disney+ animated feature Encanto.
In the ratings agency’s end-of-year streaming rankings, Netflix shows lock-out the top ten. Stranger Things came out on top of both original and acquired content as the most streamed TV show in 2022, amassing 52 billion minutes viewed for a total of 34 episodes (spanning all four seasons).
The dominance of original content is underscored even more by the fact that there are only 34 episodes of Stranger Things, while there are 192 episodes of The Office, finds Nielsen.
The overall streaming figure of 19 million years is up 27% over 2021 (15 million years’ worth) but not quite achieving the earlier pandemic record-highs of 2020.
Another notable Netflix title on the originals ranking was Wednesday, taking third place at 18.6 billion minutes streamed despite debuting in late November with just 36 days of availability on Netflix to make the cut for this chart. Ozark came in second in the original-only list (31.3 billion minutes) but fourth place in the overall ranking.
Netflix locks out the top 10 streaming episodic shows with Amazon Prime’s The Boys coming in at 11 and The Rings of Power at number 15 (9.4 billion minutes).
When it comes to original movies on streamers, Disney is the winner.
Encanto was the most streamed movie in 2022 with 27.4 billion minutes viewed and taking fifth in Nielsen’s original and acquired streaming ranking. Turning Red (11.4 billion minutes), Moana (8.6 billion minutes) and Hocus Pocus 2 (5.7 billion minutes) were other big hits for Disney+.
As you can see from the chart, it’s far from all about originals. The long-running procedural drama NCIS was the second most-watched show in 2022, gaining 38.1 billion minutes viewed across 356 episodes.
Nielsen said, “This highlights the immense attraction that library content holds for viewers who spent billions of minutes throughout the year watching popular titles like Grey’s Anatomy, Bluey, Seinfeld, Criminal Minds and the Simpsons.”
Whether acquired or original, though, Netflix still dominates as originator. The streaming service took 10 out of the 15 spots among 2022 streaming programs overall. Disney+ nabbed three spots followed by two spots for programs on multiple platforms. Netflix in fact was in command across overall, original and acquired streaming programs. Disney+ only overtook the behemoth in streaming movies thanks in part to its deep library of family favorites.
But will Netflix be able to stay top dog in 2023? HBO Max and Peacock, both of which will see their first full years of Nielsen rankings inclusion in 2023, could shake things up.
Big content spends, tapping emerging markets, and automated versioning: these are just a few of the strategies OTT companies are turning to in the fight for dominance in the global marketplace. Stay on top of the business trends and learn about the challenges streamers face with these hand-curated articles from the NAB Amplify archives:
How streamers can use the lessons learned from the past year in 2023 to help rebound from recent subscriber losses and stock price declines.
March 26, 2023
Posted
February 6, 2023
Jim Louderback: Five Developments Now Disrupting the Creator Economy
BY JIM LOUDERBACK
TL;DR
YouTube’s ad revenue continues to slide, but Shorts growth may buoy results later this year for everyone.
Snap is suddenly relevant to creators with some making over $20k a month.
Twitter will pay creators – but there’s a predatory twist.
Some early signs of TikTok views flattening out amid a new focus on transparency – but questions remain about trust and oversight.
The Supreme Court’s revisiting of Section 230 might be the most devastating move of all.
This Week 2-6-2023: Big changes are underway in the creator economy as top platforms deal with revenue drops and competition from new players. YouTube’s ad revenue continues to slide, but Shorts growth may buoy results later this year for everyone. Snap is suddenly relevant to creators with some making over $20k a month. Twitter will pay creators – but there’s a predatory twist. Some early signs of TikTok views flattening out amid a new focus on transparency – but questions remain about trust and oversight. And the Supreme Court’s revisiting of Section 230 might be the most devastating move of all. All that plus a new BHAP feature in this week’s newsletter! It’s the first full week of February and here’s what you need to know.
YouTube’s Terrible Quarter – What it Really Means: The ad recession has arrived, with YouTube’s quarterly ad revenue declining 8% from last year. At the very least that means less payout to creators, which should continue to incent those creators to diversify their revenue mix off-platform. YouTube also disclosed Shorts views jumped to 50 billion per day, and it started sharing Shorts ad revenue with creators last week as well. Is the revenue problem structural or cyclical? I think it’s mostly cyclical, as advertising is typically first to drop during a business pullback. But as short-form video eats into longer-form viewing it’s imperative that YouTube monetize those 50 billion DAUs at close to VOD rates. Longer term I think more creators will see these platforms as top-of-funnel awareness machines and instead focus on conversion instead of just creation.
Signs of a Possible TikTok View Decline: DoubleT may have hit the wall – or maybe it’s just a victim of its own success. Brendan Gahan teamed up with Trendpop to look at average views for videos that surpassed 100k. In January those videos saw over 20% less views per video than a month ago. It’s not definitive, but an interesting signal. Couple that with threats of shutdown, an errant balloon spiking U.S.-China tension and Shorts growth and perhaps there’s fire inside the smoke. In a related story, Trung Phan unpacks the TikTok Family Guy Pipeline, calls the platform “the apex predator in the attention game” and calls for it to be banned. Compelling analysis. Also sludge.
Twitter’s Predatory New Pay to Play Scheme: Twitter claims that it now pays creators, but also says that you won’t get paid unless you pay them first. That’s right, unless you buy a paid “Blue Check” plan, any money you’ve earned won’t actually accrue to you. It’s a predatory plan, because it will likely inspire a legion of hopeful creators to pony up month after month – when only a lucky few actually make any money. Shame on Twitter for preying on the little guys.
Supreme Court Decision Could Change Social Media Forever: You’ll be reading a lot about “Section 230” over the next few months. That’s because the Supreme Court will be revisiting the law that protects social platforms from being responsible for content on their platforms. It might just cause a few algorithmic changes – but it could also drastically impact everything from Reddit upvoting to Wikipedia community updates, Yelp reviews and Discord communities. I’m concerned, as governments have shown a frustratingly consistent inability to understand how technology and the internet really work.
TikTok’s Plan for Transparency – More Questions Than Answers: TikTok has developed an elaborate plan to separate its U.S.-based data from the rest of the world, along with building a monitoring and compliance infrastructure. The Platformer was invited to hear about it, and detailed what they learned (not much) from that discussion. Lawfare has a more in-depth look at how “Project Texas” will work, but it seems most of the onus of trust is passing on to Oracle. Security researcher Klon Kitchen (as quoted by the Platformer) says that “TikTok is adopting a ‘catch me if you can’ strategy like the one previously employed by Huawei.” My issue is that even if data is stored on Oracle Cloud’s U.S. servers it can still be accessed from anywhere in the world. And why is Oracle nominating the key oversight team? Can we trust Oracle? Lots of questions, not a lot of answers.
YouTube exec Andrew Leonard attempts to create a creator/influencer/celebrity taxonomy. I’m not sure that story-telling is the key differentiator but worth a read.
Great post on what really works on TikTok from Duolingo’s Zaria Parvez – the brain behind the bird. Can’t wait for the rest of the series.
An interesting look at the strategy and tactics that an interactive multi-player game used to create organic TikTok videos that drove over 100k installs.
TikTok comes up with its own “Strike” system – I still have PTSD from YouTube’s early efforts.
WEEKLY BHAP: I recently spoke about the creator economy at a corporate retreat, and then led a discussion on the future. As part of that I put together some big predictions to use if the audience was quiet. I didn’t need them. So instead of dropping them into the bit bucket I’m going to surface one each week until I run out of ideas. Here’s this week’s BHAP:
Either this year or next year U.S. workplace regulators will make an example of a top YouTube-led company by suing them for labor law violations, discrimination and/or ignoring harassment on the job. Similar to how the SEC made an example of Kim Kardashian last fall for pumping a crypto security without disclosure, toxic workplace cultures among creator-led companies will be under the microscope. I’ve heard a lot of anecdotal stories about creator-led companies violating workplace law – in large part because they just don’t know and haven’t been trained. This issue will soon come to the fore.
Thanks so much for reading and see you around the internet. Send me a note with your feedback, or post in the comments! Feel free to share this with anyone you think might be interested, and if someone forwarded this to you, you can sign up and subscribe on LinkedIn for free here!
Three different topics impacting the Creator Economy: The ban or sale of TikTok, Meta’s latest layoffs, and the release of GPT4.
March 17, 2023
Posted
February 1, 2023
Nominations Are Open for the NAB Show Excellence in Sustainability Awards
TL;DR
NAB Show is now accepting entries for the Excellence in Sustainability Awards, recognizing outstanding innovations in media technology that promote the conservation and reusability of natural resources and foster economic and social development.
Excellence in Sustainability Awards categories include the Sustainability Champion Award, the Sustainability Leadership Award, and the Sustainability Product or Service Award.
Winners of the NAB Show Excellence in Sustainability Awards will be recognized during a Main Stage ceremony at NAB Show on April 16, 2023, in Las Vegas.
NAB Show is now accepting entries for the Excellence in Sustainability Awards. The awards recognize outstanding innovations in media technology that promote the conservation and reusability of natural resources and foster economic and social development.
“Sustainability efforts not only benefit the planet and society but also make good business sense,” said Chris Brown, executive vice president of Global Connections and Events at the National Association of Broadcasters.
“In addition to providing global recognition for sustainability leaders within our industry, NAB Show is committed to working with our vendors and partners on progressive approaches that inspire the NAB Show community to take collective action in this area.”
Excellence in Sustainability Awards categories include:
The Sustainability Champion Award — Honoring individuals who demonstrate a passion in influencing their team or organization to achieve a more sustainable pathway.
The Sustainability Leadership Award — Honoring organizations that have launched or completed sustainability initiatives.
The Sustainability Product or Service Award — Honoring products or services that significantly improve sustainability or provide sustainable market alternatives that addresses a critical environmental challenge. Products/Services must be available in 2023.
An independent panel of sustainability experts will judge submissions and select winners in each category for small, medium, and large businesses and non-profit organizations.
Winners of the NAB Show Excellence in Sustainability Awards will be recognized during a Main Stage ceremony at NAB Show on April 16, 2023 in Las Vegas.
The program, announced in December, is supported by Amazon Web Services (AWS), a leading cloud provider and a leader in the media technology sector.
“We are honored to support this award and the important work our industry is doing to become more sustainable,” said Marc Aldrich, general manager of Media & Entertainment at AWS. “The media and entertainment community is continuously finding new ways to reduce our carbon footprint, from cutting back on the number of production vans for broadcasts, to flights needed, to energy output from facilities. AWS is proud to do our part in supporting these efforts through our customers and partners by running our business in an environmentally friendly way.”
The Excellence in Sustainability Awards are managed by Barbara Lange, CEO of Kibo121, a consultancy firm that guides media technology organizations on their path to sustainability.
For more information and to submit a nomination, click here.
Media & Entertainment has a big environmental impact — think carbon emissions, waste and energy use. The video entertainment industry’s carbon footprint has surpassed even that of the airline industry, prompting technology developers and other companies to step up with innovative approaches and practices. Explore handpicked articles from NAB Amplify to discover why sustainability is the number one priority for M&E, along with the latest trends in creating a greener future:
When it comes to internet use, companies, consumers and standards organizations are considering new sustainability practices.
January 31, 2023
Posted
January 31, 2023
CES 2023: Controlling the Connected Home and Media Delivery/Distribution
TL;DR
Smart TVs now represent the most important point of entertainment aggregation, control, and data collection inthe connected home, according to Parks Associates.
Eighty-seven percent of US internet households subscribe to at least one OTT video service. More than half of US broadbandhouseholds now combine one of Netflix, Amazon Prime or Disney+ services with at least one other subscription OTT service to form theironline video service portfolio.
Increases in connected deviceownership, increased streaming video, and a largeremote workforce have further strengthened theimportance of home internet.
Smart TVs now represent the most important point of entertainment aggregation, control, and data collection in the connected home, according to a new report from Parks Associates, “2023 Top Insights – Smart Home,” based on findings from the Consumer Electronics Show.
The research analysts report that annual home service spending is $340 billion across home phone, internet, mobile, security and video services, amid continued growth of value-added services and connected devices in the home.
Consumers now place more value on their home’s internet service than previously. Increases in connected device ownership, increased streaming video, and a large remote workforce have further strengthened the importance of home internet.
Parks reports that consumers are seeking new bundles and services incorporating multiple service offerings, including home internet, pay-TV, landlines, mobile phones, and home security. The rise of these bundles, including broadband value-added services, has more than offset the decline in traditional bundles, it finds.
Such bundling and aggregation offer the traditional TV broadcaster “a path forward to reimagine video offerings in a multi-channel, multi-platform world,” the analyst says.
Data about consumer viewing via connected TVs allow providers to offer an improved experience with more relevant and personalized experiences for the viewer. Meanwhile, advertising partners can execute targeted marketing campaigns based on specific interests and behaviors. Parks cites new technologies promising to bring the “shoppable ad” vision to reality on TV through T-commerce experiences.
Content remains king — that is, the most significant factor influencing consumers’ viewing decisions regarding retention, engagement, and customer acquisition, per Parks’ report. Of this, live content has become a key component of many OTT service offerings and a staple of the consumer video portfolio, with good reason.
Sports programming, the biggest and most valuable component of live TV, is migrating from traditional broadcast television to internet streaming channels. Parks thinks that this transition makes it challenging for sports fans to locate content but that this creates opportunities for providers if they can attract fans with a bundled experience.
Internet service providers, meanwhile, are “modifying their relationships with pay-TV, treating the service as a value-add to home internet, and transitioning away from legacy cable head ends to cloud-based infrastructure and streaming TV services.” The goal is to reduce operational costs and widen service appeal, says Parks.
The analyst also notes that piracy is a real problem, potentially costing more than $67 billion dollars worldwide. It expects streaming services to experiment with new ways to protect content and to explore business models that can help recoup lost revenue from password sharing.
We’re spending up to five hours on our mobile phones every day, with exclusive sports content serving as a crucial on-ramp for new users, according to mobile data analytics provider Data.ai.
Its “State of Mobile 2023” report further explores a boom in downloads that saw mobile services downloaded a record 255 billion times globally last year. As a result, mobile ad spend is on track to hit $362 billion in 2023, after surpassing $336 in 2022, despite tightening marketing budgets.
Adding coverage of major sporting events can be a “highly effective-albeit expensive-way” to add new users to popular streaming services, is one is one takeaway.
Globally, streaming of the World Cup matches and top cricket tournaments in India drove the biggest download spikes.
In the US, the World Cup also drove large adoption spikes for Peacock TV and fubo TV, while streaming deals with the NFL helped Peacock TV, Paramount Network and Amazon Prime Video.
FOX Sports and Canada’s TSN GO also saw “huge increases” in adoption as a result of their FIFA World Cup coverage.
DAZN and ESPN are the “clear standouts” in terms of consumer spending in the sports app category, earning more in 2022 than the rest of the top 10 sports apps combined. Nearly all of ESPN’s revenue comes from the US, while DAZN has managed to monetize across more markets by casting a wide net in terms of its sports coverage in different markets. Some of DAZN’s content includes Serie A in Italy (where frequent blackouts don’t appear to have dented its popularity) and Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan, as well as pay-per-view boxing.
Sports betting apps downloads peak at the start of the NFL season each year and the Super Bowl. The report found that sports betting installs reached 4.3 million at the start of the 2022-2023 NFL season, up 8% year-over-year and more than four times the total from September through October 2018. FanDuel emerged as the market leader in 2022, with BetMGM, DraftKings, and William Hill vying for the number two spot.
Data.ai observes that sports betting apps over-index for a male audience in the 25-44 age range, a similar demographic to those likely to use financial apps, for example, for cryptocurrency trading.
Non-sports content that created the biggest download spikes included Euphoria (HBO Max), Halloween Ends (Peacock TV) and House of the Dragon (HBO Max).
The United States market may be saturated by OTT providers but there’s still room for growth in Europe and Asia. That said, many European markets became more concentrated between 2020 and 2022, largely explained by the massive launch by Disney+ in the region. The report finds that OTT (over-the-top) apps such as Netflix and Disney+ grew 12% year-over-year to $7.2 billion.
“Look for other OTT providers to attempt to emulate Disney+’s successful global expansion,” is Data.ai’s note.
Spending on other apps (non-gaming) increased by 6% year-over-year to $58 billion, largely driven by subscriptions and purchases in OTT, dating, and short videos. Downloads increased 13% year-over-year to 165 billion.
Shortform video apps, led by TikTok, dominated consumer attention in 2022. Users of these apps streamed a whopping 3.1 billion hours of user-generated content daily, up 22% year-over-year, and spent $5.6 billion, up 55% year-over-year, fueling the creator economy.
“TikTok’s recent success was well beyond that of other Entertainment apps,” the report finds. “Over the past 10 years TikTok has more than twice as many downloads as the next closest app, YouTube.”
Other findings in the report: Time spent per day has reached five hours in the top mobile-first markets.
Downloads of mobile apps grew to 255 billion (+11% YoY), and hours spent peaked at 4.1 trillion (+9% YoY). Meanwhile, consumer spending across all app stores, cooled to $167 billion (-2% YoY) for first time ever due to decline in gaming spend, which was previously bolstered by pandemic conditions. However, non-gaming mobile services and subscriptions reached record spend.
“For the first time, macroeconomic factors are dampening growth in mobile spend,” says Data.ai CEO Theodore Krantz. “Consumer spend is tightening while demand for mobile is the gold standard. In 2023, mobile will be the primary battleground for unprecedented consumer touch, engagement and loyalty.”
6G may already be on the horizon, but there’s still a lot to understand about the benefits — and limitations — of 5G, which is rolling out across the US but has yet to reach peak saturation. Dive into these selections from the NAB Amplify archives to learn what, exactly, 5G is, how it differs from 4G, and — most importantly — how 5G will bolster the Media & Entertainment industry on the road ahead: