It’s All About The User Experience

To constantly improve the user experience there is a need to facilitate agile product development, more frequent product introductions, and smarter user interfaces. This is especially critical as the market continues to fragment, and consumer tastes and expectations continue to escalate, while the pressure to generate ever more interesting and sophisticated content mounts daily.

All this is taking place against a backdrop of major industry consolidation which means more content consolidation as traditional media & entertainment companies fight for market share with agile, well-funded and creative newcomers like Netflix, Amazon Studios, Apple TV+ and YouTube TV creating a cascade of events within the industry.

One area where this is being felt from a user experience point of view, is at the intersection of entertainment and advertising, which is getting a lot smarter. Because of the deep analytics possible with machine learning, as well as the vast opportunities available with augmented reality and AI, advertising is more personalized and more targeted – and this is the hope of advertisers – more effective than ever. It’s already possible to order your favorite actor’s jacket just by clicking on the screen when it appears. Additionally, using big data, advanced analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, marketing agencies will be able to switch out specific product placements to those that consumers are most likely to buy.

All of these emerging protocols, technologies and disruptors that are profoundly changing the user experience - and how viewers experience content - is also the areas that are experiencing the fastest revenue growth. Over the five-year period from 2020 to 2025, virtual reality (VR), over-the-top (OTT) video, and internet advertising will be among the fastest-growing revenue generators for media & entertainment companies in the U.S. and globally.

And finally, it has been a bumpy road, but VR is coming into its own, with revenue numbers that command attention as the VR marketplace transforms into a legitimate, and increasingly profitable, entertainment platform. In addition to the major studios and gaming companies, traditional media outlets such as The Washington Post, The New York Times and USA Today, are getting bored with VR and leading a new trend in immersive, VR journalism and story-telling. U.S. is currently the world’s leading VR market, with revenue of $US2.6 billion projected in 2020 with 250%-plus revenue increases being experienced year over year since 2016. By 2023, VR industry revenues are expected to top $US7.2 billion.