4 Trends Revolutionizing the Advertising, Media, and Entertainment Industry

Consumer data is critical in the advertising, media, and entertainment sector. However, data is often scattered across different tools, teams, and technologies, making it difficult to share information. Businesses also face challenges related to privacy and regulations, which can discourage data sharing. Moreover, inadequate infrastructure to support new technologies can hinder collaboration and data sharing, resulting in missed opportunities to optimize ad spend, track attribution, and maximize advertising revenue.

Despite these challenges, there are four significant trends in the industry that are transforming the way businesses operate. By embracing these trends, organizations can enhance customer experiences and drive revenue. Let’s take a closer look at each trend.

1. In today’s fast-paced business world, collaborating on data is no longer an option but a necessity for companies to succeed.

As a result, more and more organizations are turning to data clean rooms to facilitate secure and effective data collaboration. These clean rooms provide a controlled and safe environment for working with sensitive data, ensuring privacy and compliance. Given the current media and entertainment landscape, companies are facing immense market pressures and customer demands for personalized content. To succeed in this environment, these organizations must effectively collaborate and analyse data from a wide range of sources. The ultimate objective is to create a complete 360-degree view of their subscribers, enhance advertising effectiveness, and optimize business decision-making.

To achieve this, industry leaders are embracing secure, near real-time data collaboration in the cloud. This approach enables them to merge and analyse data from various sources such as websites, CRM systems, online streaming platforms, advertisements, and social media, among others. These companies are also increasingly adopting data clean rooms, especially when strict privacy, governance, and query controls are needed.

The trend towards using data clean rooms is expected to become more widespread across the industry. By leveraging this technology, media and entertainment companies can confidently handle sensitive data while complying with various regulations. Overall, the use of data clean rooms is a crucial step towards achieving greater transparency, accountability, and efficiency in the industry.

2. Growing Utilization of Data-Driven Technologies

The rapidly evolving consumer behaviour is a direct response to the new technological innovations that are shaping our world. These innovations are generating vast amounts of fast-moving data and driving business efficiencies while simultaneously enhancing customer experiences. Some of the latest data-driven technologies that are gaining popularity in this field include:

• Data clean rooms: These secure environments enable organizations to analyse and collaborate on data across clouds and regions without compromising data privacy. They provide user-defined rules for querying data and offer a high level of data governance, making them an invaluable tool for customer analysis.
• Artificial intelligence (AI): With its ability to leverage various data types, AI is becoming increasingly popular for better-informed content, personalization, subscription, channel, pricing, and marketing strategies.
• Cloud-native apps: These apps are designed to provide improved experiences for subscribers, power data analytics faster, and are easily managed, flexible, scalable, and cost-efficient. Cloud-native apps are the perfect option for this fast-paced and highly competitive industry.
• Cloud gaming: This innovative technology, fuelled by the growing adoption of 5G, supports increased power, speed, and connectivity across devices, resulting in better customer experiences. Some experts believe that cloud gaming will become the “killer app” for 5G, similar to how streaming video was for 4G.

According to a recent Ericsson study, 5G is on its way to mainstream adoption, with penetration rates already surpassing 15%. The future looks bright for media and entertainment companies that embrace these innovative technologies and use them to their advantage.

While companies struggle to make use of third-party data, consumers often worry if their information is safe.

3. Improved Data Privacy

Trust is paramount for consumers. They demand greater privacy and stricter governance of their personal data, and companies that handle such data must ensure that they provide the highest levels of protection. However, the sheer volume and velocity of data created by ad, media, and entertainment companies require an agile and comprehensive approach to data management. Here are the priority areas that companies must focus on:

• Data privacy regulations: Consumers and governments are becoming more sophisticated about how personal data is being used, leading to greater demand for privacy protection. This has led to the introduction of GDPR, CCPA, and CPRA regulations, and companies that handle consumer data must adhere to these standards. With more regulations set to come into effect in 2023, companies must ensure they are fully compliant.
• Data security: Identity theft and unauthorized use of personal data pose a significant threat to customers. Therefore, data security is a top priority for companies that handle such data. Companies must ensure that they have robust security measures in place to protect customers’ data from cyber threats.
• Deprecation of third-party cookies and other common identifiers: Third-party cookies and other common identifiers, such as mobile ad IDs and IP addresses, have traditionally been a valuable source of customer data. However, regulatory pressures and shifts in how media and technology companies operate are threatening the existence of such identifiers. Companies must ensure they have alternative data sources in place and are ready to adapt to these changes.

To succeed in the advertising, media, and entertainment industry, companies must apply stringent governance, privacy, and security measures while ensuring the ongoing ability to share and collaborate on data. This requires companies to invest in infrastructure and tools that enable them to share and collaborate on data securely and efficiently. By doing so, companies can build trust with their customers and ensure that their data is protected.

4. The need to embrace newer technology is now.

Inflation pressures, budget cuts, and shifting business strategies have led to a decline in advertising spend in the United States for seven consecutive months. To maximize their returns on ad spend (ROAS) and validate their investments, companies must acquire data-driven insights. Increasingly, they are turning to advanced analytics, such as AI and machine learning, to analyse data and make smarter advertising decisions. With data science, they can optimize customer engagement, identify opportunities to increase lifetime customer value, and enrich customer profiles with third-party data, including weather, geospatial, and demographic data. Such data creates a more complete 360-degree customer view, enabling better business decision-making. According to McKinsey’s “Next in Personalization 2021 Report,” 76% of consumers are more likely to consider purchasing from brands that personalize their experience. It is crucial that advertisers keep this in mind and use advanced analytics to stay competitive in the market.