Consumer demand for personalisation and tech advances drives innovation in entertainment and media industry

Consumer demand for personalisation and tech advances drives innovation in entertainment and media industry

Now it’s personal. According to PwC’s Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2019–2023, consumers are embracing the expanding opportunities to enjoy media experiences tailored to their needs, and companies are designing offerings and business models to revolve around those personal preferences. In a fundamental shift, they’re leveraging data and usage patterns to pitch their products not at audiences of billions, but at billions of individuals. 

The result is an emerging world of media that’s more personal than ever before: one in which empowered consumers control their own media consumption via an expanding range of smart devices, curate their personal selection of channels via over-the-top (OTT) services and bring more media content into their lives by embracing the smart home and connected car. It’s also an increasingly mobile world, soon to be augmented by 5G networks. As personal connections proliferate, however, consumers continue to be concerned about the safety and privacy of their data. With trust at a premium, pressure is intensifying on companies to adapt to new privacy regimes.

Global industry growth continues to outpace GDP

These profound shifts are taking place against a background of ongoing global growth in entertainment & media (E&M) revenues. The Outlook - which provides revenue data and forecasts for 14 industry segments across 53 territories - projects that total global spending on E&M will rise at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.3% over the next five years, to 2023. This growth rate will see the industry’s global revenue reach EUR 2,3tn in 2023, up from EUR 1,9tn in 2018. 

Sharp differences in growth rates at the segment level 

Looking at specific E&M segments, virtual reality (VR) maintains its position as the highest-growth segment, but - after a year in which consumers’ take-up continued to lag behind expectations - its lead over the OTT video segment has greatly diminished. Podcasts and esports, which sit within larger segments, have extremely strong growth revenue forecasts at CAGRs of 28.5% and 18.3%, respectively. At the lower end of the growth spectrum, the traditional TV and home video segment now has negative growth expectations for the first time, as cord-cutting by consumers continues to rise and sales of DVDs keep plummeting. The print-exposed newspapers and consumer magazines segment has the worst forecast through to 2023, with revenues projected to suffer a compound annual decline of 2.3%.

Innovating for growth in a world of me media

 The underlying shift reshaping and reorienting the entire industry is ongoing changes in human behaviour, with a decisive turn towards personalisation. At one level, the new world of E&M appears more isolated, with growing numbers of people engrossed in their own choice of content. But there’s also a dimension of personalisation that’s inherently social, as people share playlists on music-streaming services, recommend movies to friends on social platforms or play multi-user video game battles.

Advances in technology and service offerings are finally enabling people to move from passive to active consumption — not just of individual pieces of media, but of media as a whole. One trend is for consumers to reject the bundles of channels offered by cable or satellite providers, and instead construct their own ad hoc bundles made up of OTT services. Global OTT revenue hit bn in 2018, and is forecast to almost double by 2023. Another sign is the rise of the smart home, with ownership of smart speaker devices set to rise at a 38.1% CAGR to hit 440mn devices globally in 2023.

This active media consumption personally tailored by the customer will be boosted by the rise of 5G, as Kurt Cappoen, Entertainment & Media leader, PwC Belgium, explains: “5G’s impact will be felt across the entire technology, media and telecommunications value chain for the next decade. It will hasten existing trends towards personalisation, making it easier, more convenient and cheaper to access more media on phones and other mobile devices. Key areas of impact of 5G for E&M will include enabling more streaming of high-quality video — including of live events like sports and music — and better use of AI, together with massive opportunities for video games and VR in terms of speed and quality of images.”

Four priorities are shaping companies’ strategies 

  • One size does not fit all: As companies approach both markets of individuals and individual geographic markets, they are finding that it makes sense to present different options: all-you-can-eat offerings with unlimited usage in some areas, tiers of payments for different services in less developed markets, and competition on affordability.
  • The number of consumer touch points is expanding: As media and e-commerce experiences become more personal, gratification for consumers is becoming increasingly instant and immediate. In response, content creators and distributors are devising new ways to appeal to consumers. Voice is also becoming a key form of interaction for both search and shopping, supported by the rise of smart speakers.
  • Technological innovation introduces a new era of personalised computing: Companies are leveraging AI’s ability to understand people’s individual tastes and consumption habits to offer up the content individual users find most compelling. The combination of AI with 5G will be especially powerful, as it will fuel the rapid growth of segments such as video games and VR.  
  • Trust and regulation remain pivotal, as personal data hygiene becomes key: With consumers moving to the centre of their own world of media experiences, their personal data — from the music they stream and the news they read to the products they buy — is taking a central role. In the emerging world, maintaining personal data hygiene is becoming key to the overall health of the E&M ecosystem. For companies, this goes beyond regulatory compliance, which is simply a “must have”, and extends to building trust by behaving transparently and responsibly with customers’ data, ensuring the accuracy of news, and being sensitive to concerns around issues such as digital addiction.

“The personalisation wave — fuelled by evolving customer behaviour — is set to be amplified by the forces of technology, scale, and aggressive investing and competition,” explains Kurt Cappoen. “As the borders separating former media silos erode, companies need to think more broadly about the areas and segments in which they operate and need to be agile in responding to technological developments such as 5G. The individual customer is the focal point, and this will not change any time soon. Hence marketers will need to allocate increasing attention to new types of content and platforms — influencers, live events, ads inside apps and more.”

−ENDS−

Press access to Global Entertainment & Media Outlook content online

To request press access to the online Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2019–2023 content, contact Ashley Worley at [email protected]. This access will allow you to illustrate this and other media stories both by extracting detail from the Global Entertainment & Media Outlook dataset and analysis at a segment and territory level, and by creating charts on-screen that can be exported for use with your stories. 

About the Global Entertainment & Media Outlook

PwC’s 20th annual edition of the Global Entertainment & Media Outlook is a comprehensive online source of global analysis for consumer and advertising spending. With like-for-like, five-year historical and five-year forecast data and commentary for 14 defined industry segments in 53 territories, the Outlook makes it easy to compare and contrast consumer and advertising spending across segments and territories. Find out more at www.pwc.com/outlook.

Segments covered by the Global Entertainment & Media Outlook

Books; Business-to-business; Cinema; Data consumption; Internet access; Internet advertising; Music, Radio and podcasts; Newspapers and consumer magazines; OTT video; Out-of-home advertising; Traditional TV and home video; TV advertising; Video games and esports; Virtual reality.

About Global Entertainment & Media Outlook data 

Much of the content in this press release is taken from data in the Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2019–2023. PwC continually seeks to update the online Global Entertainment & Media Outlook data. Therefore, please note that the data in this press release may not be aligned with the data found online. The online Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2019–2023 is the most up-to-date source of consumer and advertising spend data. 

About PwC

At PwC, our purpose is to build trust in society and solve important problems. We’re a network of firms in 158 countries with more than 250,000 people who are committed to delivering quality in assurance, advisory and tax services. Find out more and tell us what matters to you by visiting us at www.pwc.com.

“PwC” refers to the PwC network and/or one or more of its member firms, each of which is a separate legal entity. Please see www.pwc.com/structure for further details.

© 2019 PwC. All rights reserved

Erik Oosthuizen External Communications Manager
PwC Entertainment & Media Perspectives 2019.pdf 842 KB

 

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At PwC, our purpose is to build trust in society and solve important problems. We’re a network of firms in 151 countries with more than 364,000 people who are committed to delivering quality in assurance, advisory and tax services. Find out more and tell us  what matters to you by visiting us at www.pwc.com.

PwC refers to the PwC network and/or one or more of its member firms, each of which is a separate legal entity. Please see www.pwc.com/structure for further details.

© 2023 PwC. All rights reserved.

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