The global entertainment media landscape is undergoing a major change primarily due to shift in consumer behaviour driven by technology. This is highly evident in the online video industry where viewership is shifting from linear (such as TV) to on-demand (YouTube, Netflix) consumption with social networks like YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter etc. are becoming the new age distribution and personalization platforms. Today, smartphone has become the new personalized TV with primetime becoming anytime. Video consumption is on multiple screens (TV, phone, tablet, game consoles etc.) and content types such as short, long, live, 360 degrees & VR videos supported by shifting biz models (OTT, inventory, subscription, branded content etc.)
These trends are rapidly fragmenting and shaking up existing media business models based on traditional cable and broadcast networks. In this new world content success requires not only the right insight, but also an ability to create content scalable for these platforms in a low cost fashion. This is where technology comes as the enabler and plays a key role in determining the relevant content for the right audience. Content was the king in an era of linear television with limited distribution. In today’s on-demand, hyper connected, personalized world, it is not just content, but data about the content is equally important. Technology not only enables global distribution, but also helps to curate and personalize content tailored for audience interest and engagement.
The key to engage audience successfully on digital platforms, is to show them relevant content that is personalized. Platforms like YouTube and Facebook use algorithmic curation and machine learning to show relevant and personalized content to audience.
In this new era of unlimited distribution outlets and personalized content consumption the key to success is to know what ‘content to create’ for the target consumers and to ‘create it at scale’. Culture Machine’s intelligence platforms helps to identify the right content to create & Video Machine platforms help to ‘create at scale’. As new types of short form content such as silent videos, listicle, how-to, cover songs, recipes or curated news, are becoming increasingly popular in the social video world, technologies such as Video Machine is an attempt to solve the scalability problem. At Culture Machine, analytics and scalable video creation is a core part of our DNA.
An intrinsic study of the exponentially growing Virtual Reality (VR) world showed that Facebook is the preferred choice for content creators with very high viewership and engagement in sports and video games categories. It’s a powerful insight for sports creators to go bullish on 360-degree content and create content which provides a richer experience to their viewers or for fitness brands to launch a whole new format of 360-degree commercials to showcase their products, gain multi-fold reach and engagement using this popular format.
Personalisation has to be prioritized from the moment content is created. It must be created with the ability for consumers to navigate, explore and customize it to their personal preferences and interests. Emerging content technology is the key to creating a new kind of customer-centric experience that also allows marketers to glean deep analytics from the content, understand its effectiveness, and optimize it for better performance.
In the next 5 years, it won’t be strange to see the marketing’s function becoming more integral with technology teams giving birth to marketing-tech teams. CMOs and CIOs will collaborate on greater projects. We are in the early phase of this major tech driven revolution and not long from now we may see a world with personalized 1:1 media for every consumer.
About Venkat Prasad
Venkat Prasad, Co-founder, COO/ CTO- Culture Machine
Venkat is an entrepreneur with deep interest in business incubation, new ventures, operational scaling, emerging business finance, product and technology commercialization in new media, digital video, consumer internet, Saas, enterprise software, emerging markets and analytics space.
His Specialties include Executive Management, Product Development & Commercialization, Consumer Internet Business Launch, Scale, Finance, Fund Raise, Online Media, Network and Content Syndication, Distribution, Analytics, Information Engineering/Architecture, Enterprise and Cloud Technologies.
Shifting towards the New Age of Distribution and Personalization Platforms
