Supply Chain, Accessibility, Media Intelligence MediaTech in 2025 – Challenges and Opportunities Maarten VerwaestJanuary 29, 2025 As we move further into 2025, the media landscape continues to evolve at an interesting and from time to time uncomfortable pace, presenting both challenges and opportunities for broadcasters and content producers. From the globalisation of streaming platforms to the advent of new content formats, AI’s practical applications, supply chain disruptions, and concerns around security and authenticity—producers and broadcasters must navigate an increasingly complex ecosystem, and urgently tap into new sources of revenue. From the many conversations we have had with our customers and partners around the year-end, here is the gist. 1. Global Streamers: A Threat to Content Diversity? Global streaming platforms have reshaped the industry. For a seemingly simple subscription fee, they offer consumers access to unlimited volumes of content from around the world. However, this expansion has come at a cost. Successes of a happy few are only possible at the expense of significant value destruction for a much larger cohort of independent producers. Despite efforts of several European countries to stimulate local production by establishing co-production and co-financing mechanisms, the dominance of major streamers leads to market consolidation and limits opportunities for local and independent content producers. According to recent data, excellently curated and published by Vitrina.ai, in a timeframe from May to December 2024, the industry has experienced significant decrease in financing and commissioned projects, creating a landscape where primarily the largest players thrive. Source: Vitrina.ai For content creators, this means a greater fight to retain ownership and control over intellectual property (IP). With fewer distribution options and more stringent licensing terms, ensuring that your content retains its value is paramount. As consolidation accelerates, producers must prioritise valorisation of their IP, possibly looking into alternative distribution strategies to foster diversity in content offerings. 2. New Formats Enabled by the Evolution of Content Consumption The way audiences consume content is undergoing a fundamental shift, and it is happening here and now. The wave of digitisation between 2000 and 2010 paved the way for less linear and more on demand viewing. Metadata was key to make sure the search and recommendation engines of set-top boxes and smartTV could surface your content, but the formats themselves were essentially copied from linear television. As we speak, there is a much more fundamental shift going on, which will potentially have a massive impact on traditional value distribution. The statistics of the use of Spotify, Youtube and TikTok are staggering. While originally intended as a place for dog-and-pony videos and other forms of user generated content, these platforms are now substituting traditional media quite aggressively. And they are defining the sources of revenue of the future, whilst at the same time recalibrating our perception of quality. This evolution is consistent with predictions by Doug Shapiro, author of The Mediator on Substack. Source: Nielsen, via Doug Shapiro Without claiming to be complete, here are some specific data points. Youtubification: according to Nielsen, YouTube’s share of video is up >50% in 2 Years, and on the last DPP Leader’s Briefing, we learned that 39% of YouTube content is now consumed in living rooms, making it a direct competitor to traditional broadcasters. YouTube is also experimenting with QR tags that enable companion devices to interact with content in real time, likely tapping into commission-based revenue streams. This Tiktoktification: Every platform seems to be shifting from a follower- and recommendation-based model, to a discovery-first approach using continuous scrolling (with – no surprise – algorithms that seem to be designed for maximum addiction). This means traditional audience-building strategies are obsolete, and success now depends entirely on creative quality. For broadcasters, adapting to this change and at least taking advantage of this mechanism for promotional purposes is critical. Reliance on legacy audience structures does not longer guarantee engagement. Product Placement 2.0: While sponsoring deals and product placement have existed since the earliest days of television in one way or another, brands are embedding themselves ever more deeply into the narrative, making advertisements more subtle and seamlessly integrated as part of the viewing experience than ever before. What is today still referred to as “programmatic advertisement”, when combined with the right AI tools to match individuals with specific areas of interest, product placement will likely the first successful application of hyper-personalisation. And a very rewarding opportunity for those that control the data. Broadcasters and producers must stay on top, consider exploring direct to consumer models, and manage the use of valuable metadata, end-to-end. Retail Media: The very next step in the evolution of formats and monetisation models, as highlighted on various occasions by Evan Shapiro, is the rise of retail media. Commerce will be integrated directly into content experiences, thereby completely blurring the lines between entertainment and shopping. 3. AI’s Breakthrough, a Stepstone to more Personalisation and Accessibility For years, AI has been discussed as a transformative technology in media, and 2025 will prove to be the year it finally delivers practical value. As suggested on a few occasions before, not for the purpose of making people redundant, but to enable them creating more compelling stories. Source: Deepdub AI-powered tools have become more accessible and affordable than ever before, and by using solution similar to those provided by Limecraft or MomentsLab that are very much optimised for accuracy and usability, producers and broadcasters can now enhance content experiences in tangible ways: Captioning and Subtitling: Regulatory obligations such as the EU Accessibility Act (EAA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in the U.S. are driving demand for subtitles and captions. Given the sheer volume content, and the need to reduce turnaround times, automation is no longer optional but necessary. 💡More on AI-assisted subtitling and localisation on our website AI in Post-Production: As suggested by Dave Klee of A+E Networks US at the 2024 DPP Leader’s Briefing, AI enabled processing is on the verge of modernising the traditional edit suite, making content retrieval and pre-cuts more much faster and consistent compared to conventional processes. It will allow producers to do more with already existing material, assuming the metadata is of sufficient quality to enable reuse. AI-Powered Dubbing: At CES 2025, Deepdub showcased an AI-powered localisation platform capable of dubbing content into over 130 languages with remarkable accuracy, taking emotional, linguistic, and cultural nuances into account. AI in the Supply Chain: Erik Ahlin, industry expert and editor at mediasupplychain.org, suggests that predicts that AI in the Supply Chain will take care of the grunt work, which will allow us humans being more involved in decision making, quality checking, and being creative. Technology will have a new abstraction layer that will enable humans to do these things better. Despite these advancements, regulation may introduce handicaps as well. Notably, the EU AI Act may introduce new hurdles to adoption, potentially slowing down the uptake of truly intelligent machines. However, for those who integrate AI effectively and consciously, the benefits far outweigh the risks. 4. Supply Chain Disruption, from Traditional Services Providers, over middleware using APIs, to Autonomously Interacting Agents We don’t share the opinion voiced by mood-making experts, recently claiming that SaaS is dead and that the future will be AI agents. Yet we believe that the way systems interact, can be way more intelligent than linking together a hodgepodge of API’s. Reliable, robust, and scalable integration of systems is such whereby integration points declare what information they can accept and publish, whereby processes are pre-configured on a higher level using process templates, and whereby the security perimeters can be adapted at run time according to evolving requirements (without the need of further engineering work). It is extremely important that Media Supply chains are refactored rapidly. The current solutions, still often relying on manual work, are facing unprecedented strain due to the proliferation of federated but loosely couple production conglomerates, and due to the fact that producers have to deliver to 10’s of broadcasters and vice versa. Traditional file transfer solutions like Signiant, MASV, and Aspera remain important, but they only address part of the challenge. As supply chains are more and more flexible and dynamic, the complexity of media logistics increases exponentially. The real challenge lies in the orchestration of supply chain solutions that can self-organise rather than relying on third-party middleware or simple API integrations. The complexity lies in the metadata, much more than the actual file transfer. For a supply chain to be scalable and agile, the participants need to exchange, manipulate, adapt, QC, verify, approve or reject, metadata and ancillary media files without further meetings or informal communication. 💡Interested to know more? Download our recent White Paper ‘A Better Way to Manage the Content Delivery Process‘ The future will likely involve autonomous intelligent agents that coordinate workflows dynamically—optimising content distribution in real time without human intervention. For broadcasters, this means reassessing existing ingest workflows and embracing automation, for the purpose of operational efficiency. But also producers will need to review the way they deliver content to ensure competitiveness in an increasingly fragmented media ecosystem. 5. Security, Fake News, and Self-Organising Authenticity The rise of AI-generated content gives rise to new breed of security concerns. Deepfakes, intellectual property theft, and copyright infringements are all on the rise, challenging broadcasters to find new ways to authenticate content. One emerging solution is C2PC (Content-to-Provenance Certification), which promises that media assets are traceable and verifiable. The ability for embedding identity and authenticity markers into content, albeit not sufficient on its own, it will be an necessary element for content owners to combat the spread of fake news and protect the integrity of their work. On a more technical level, it is worth considering that, together with the vast deployment of compute power, certain malevolent individuals or organisations have easier access to methods for guessing or reverse engineering passwords and exploit identity theft. As a producer or broadcaster of valuable assets, it is of critical importance to implement a zero trust policy, and to impose security measures like multi-factor authentication or single-sign on. Misinformation remains a significant threat. The industry and the tech community must work collectively to develop self-regulating verification systems (blockchain – anyone?), AI, and decentralised networks to maintain credibility in an era of rampant digital forgery. Navigating the Future “While global interdependencies in the Digital Age brings immense opportunities, it also creates vulnerabilities. Effective governance, ethical technology use, and sustainable development are essential to ensuring that globalisation benefits all.”, said Jeff Sachs in 2020 in his book Ages of Globalisation. His predictions were of a spine-chilling accuracy. The media landscape of 2025 will be characterised by massive disruption and opportunity at the same time. Global streaming consolidation, new content formats, automation and industrialisation enabled by AI, in turn paving the way for hyperpersonalisation, self-organising supply chains, and security concerns all present challenges that command strategic thinking. For executive producers and broadcasters, the ability to innovate, embrace new technologies, and protect their intellectual property will be key to staying ahead in an increasingly competitive and complex industry. The future of media isn’t just about content creation—it’s about agility, authenticity, and the ability to anticipate what’s next. Those who take action now will be the ones shaping the industry for years to come.