Given the popularity of the likes of Netflix, there’s no doubt that 2018 is putting content producers and publishers under more pressure than ever. While this is good news for streaming services with content on tap, or the ability to buy studios who do, it is increasingly challenging for those that lack the budget available to the bigger distributors if they don’t also have the technology to help them in the content arms race. It’s driven by enormous sums of investment in online content licensing and the creation of original content by streaming services eager to snap up as many subscribers globally as possible.
According to Unisphere Research forecast, live, linear OTT viewing will surpass traditional broadcast TV viewing by 2020 and, according to Zenith Media, mobile video consumption is at an estimated 28 minutes per person per day. This consumer trend towards binging hours of online content has led to a content arms race in the media and entertainment industry.
But the real secret to success lies in an effective content supply chain that saves costs and improves the overall customer experience.
For smaller content producers willing to invest in the speed and efficiency of their content supply chains sooner rather than later, the visibility into relevant data sets provides unparalleled insight, which can be effectively used to calculate their return on investment in content production and make smarter decisions.,
Becoming your own Netflix isn’t just possible, it’s within reach.
As the amount of original content continues to soar, a growing number of distributors have less patience when it comes to waiting for shows to build an audience and this means shake-outs for shows experiencing a “bad month”. In order to combat any lulls in content in this instance, content producers must implement a media asset management system and some form of an archive.
If that system is working effectively for the content product – which is rarely the case – and there is a central repository of assets operating across the entire organisation, it means that they have quicker access to old content that can be reused at a moment’s notice, much to the delight of any content distributor.
Once those initial efficiencies have been put in place and existing content is no longer being recreated, the next step is building out the workflow from that core and connecting all the systems and processes. Then content producers can really start to accelerate efficiencies by automating tasks previously undertaken by humans with artificial intelligence plug-ins.
Automation is transforming every aspect of our day-to-day lives, and the media and entertainment industry is no exception. Here, capabilities can be multiplied, and on the same budget, to allow content producers to better target niche markets around the world. By automating a tedious and traditionally manually-driven process, content producers can knock as much as 90 per cent off of the time taken to recognise a piece of content.
Investment in AI and automation has become imperative for any content producers wanting to measure the appeal of their content to a new demographic before investing mammoth amounts of money – particularly now that audiences are more fragmented, and producers have to store more metadata because more content is localised for more regions.
In a rapidly evolving landscape, it’s vital that producers can keep pace with new technologies that are transforming the way people consumer their content. Virtual reality and 360-video are just some of the forms of content that producers are keeping a close eye on. However, if producers don’t have the supply chain in place that allows them to make it easy to test the relevance of new formats and technologies for their audiences and processes, they risk falling behind.
