Industry Perspectives

The media and entertainment industry is continuously challenged by the pressures of providing subscribers with engagement and experiences while managing the costs of operations. The balance of services available, be it streaming or gaming, the leveraged integration with subscriber experiences and subscription management needs to continuously improve. While the resilience of services provided is dependent on reliability, consumer confidence and expectations have elevated the desire to provide better digital experiences.

For media and entertainment organizations, a steady focus on digital innovation that moves beyond transformation to digital modernization is necessary. Ventana Research has identified three key business trends every organization should address in the journey towards better outcomes. The first trend centers around the mobility of content and the community of creators who curate and publish media on the platforms on which consumers interact. The volume of content available through mobile sharing and on-demand across devices drives new business opportunities. With those opportunities comes technological challenges to ensure the reliability of digital services. Anticipating consumer engagement and demand requires effective planning and consideration of an influencer economy that depends on platforms and tools to publish content that reaches existing and new audiences.

A business’s media reach within vertical industries spreads consumer expectations and requirements across all parties involved in providing digital services and that including streaming services. The need to digitally target and advertise products and services on a variety of media channels requires a high level of sophistication to ensure expected outcomes are achieved. Efficient subscription management amongst those delivering digital services is key to positive subscriber experiences but so is the ability to provide simple methods to converse with support through virtual agent support.

Lastly, consider the spectrum of digital mediums that consumers use to post everything from conversations to static images to video to reach desired audiences. Media is increasingly consumed through audio-focused podcasts and short-form videos. The heightened engagement of these mediums allows businesses to simplify the methods used to create the content for those platforms, while others require greater sophistication. Engaging consumer and business audiences requires a focus on all digital mediums to better understand how to create consumption experiences that appeal to customers and, ultimately, optimize outcomes.

The media and entertainment industry is currently working through significant post-pandemic duress with the increase in engagement and the need for digital transformation without the technology necessary to modernize operations. The interconnectedness of consumer and subscriber interaction efficiency and how a business operates must be considered together for a more unified approach. By 2024, one-half of media and entertainment organizations will use conversational computing technologies like IVA to enable a more intelligent enterprise to engage and satisfy customers.

Media and entertainment organizations should assess digital process efficiency and readiness to meet the needs of consumers and pressures to have a simplified subscriber and billing experience. How organizations adapt and develop a responding sense of urgency will determine effectiveness as measured by utilization of services and insights in how to engage and satisfy customers. Ventana Research recommends that media and entertainment organizations adapt and transform to be digitally effective for operational processes that best meet the industry needs. The risk in not being resilient and ready to meet these trends can have a direct impact on retention and profitability.