IBC 2023 – key takeaways

I'll say it from the start - IBC2023 was one of the best trade shows I’ve ever attended (and I’ve been to plenty at this point!) It was great to catch up with so many of you in Amsterdam and hear about what's going on across the industry.

However, whilst it was a great show for me personally, it was clear that these are challenging times for many in media. I'm sure things will improve over time, but have captured some of the key themes from IBC2023, taken from dozens of discussions with people across the industry, over a packed few days. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Steady as we go

Across the board, most media companies were looking for ways to save money. Intent on cost optimization, they were looking for solutions that enhanced efficiency and reduced costs. Many spoke about the rapid rise in the cost of capital, the impact of cord cutting & rapid churn (particularly in the US) and broader concerns about the impact that a difficult economic outlook might have across the media industry.

There were some green shoots - a number of companies said they were exploring the ways in which AI could innovate (more on that later) and transform their organisations, but most were intent on ‘doing more with less’. Faced with increasingly complex content supply challenges, they were looking for ways to avoid increasing spend (or more accurately to reduce spend) over the next 12+ months.

As as a service provider at Devoncroft put it: “we and our customers need to manage more with the same or less .. unlike 12 months ago, we’re now considering whether to propose solutions based around existing assets, at a better price-point for end customers, rather than new technology but at higher cost.”?

Content is still king – but finding it is harder than ever

Most attendees were clear – quality content is still the currency which content studios, FAST channels and content platforms need to deal in. With audiences managing content across transactional video (will there be a revival of this in the coming months?) an explosion in the range of subscription service like Peloton, Calm, Microsoft and others, all competing for attention with media audiences, it’s essential that content owners put quality content front and centre.

Recent events have made this very hard – witness the writers’ strike impasse in Hollywood right now. However, audiences still want great content, and with so many ways to consume shows, content discovery will be more important than ever. We heard that voice search will grow in importance, as will other, simpler methods of finding content on platforms.

FAST is here to stay, but it is evolving and will continue to do so

Excuse the plug, but the launch of Whip Media’s new FASTrack product went very well indeed. The solution helps media companies simplify the process of tracking content performance across FAST platforms as well as EST / TVOD / SVOD and AVOD. The level of positive responses we received was great, but not really surprising – in the months preceding IBC, most of our conversations had been centered around FAST, particularly in the US.

FAST remains one of the few good news stories in the industry right now and its rapid growth has cemented the technology’s place as an important option for audiences who want to consume media in new ways. Nonetheless, we are convinced that it is one of an array of revenue stream options, not a silver bullet way of replacing linear broadcast revenues. As the market matures, and take-up continues, expect platforms and business models to evolve, at an incredibly fast pace.

Flexibility is key

Budgets are tight, complexity won't go away, so flexibility is key. Whether from a desire to support new FAST platforms, or changes in audience behaviour, it’s harder than ever to just get content to our audiences.

There is huge pressure on companies looking to deliver or package their content and get it in front of people. Flexibility has become essential (if it wasn’t already). Monolithic system(s) just don’t work, we need solutions that play nicely with each other. Best-of-breed partners need to spend time working with each others, understanding customer problems and building solutions that fix a real problem. We need to implement tightly coupled solutions, which can be inter-operative and adopted to the changes going on in our fast-changing world?

There’s a change coming, but it’s not here yet

Some of us (myself included) expected major focus and discussion around Generative AI particularly, as well as AI in general. Whilst the topic came up quite frequently, it was interesting to hear that most companies are still experimenting with the technology, rather than deploying it at production scale. We actually heard of very few (although there were definitely some) end-to-end workflows leveraging AI in wide-scale production. At Whip, we've adopted a similar approach – we’re testing AI on some very focused workflows but have yet to implement it at scale on customer sites.

Nonetheless, we're sure that a change is coming - some broadcasters told us they have identified almost 100 different workflows which could benefit from Generative AI, so we expect widespread adoption to be a case of when, not if.

Let’s keep talking!

I look forward to continuing the conversation with all of you in the coming days and weeks, but please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you’d like to talk about any of the topics above. Whip and I both have long standing experience and some powerful tools which address many of the challenges that we are all facing right now and we'd love to talk more.

Whip Media Saj Jayasinghe Mike Sid Dave McManus Adrian Janon David Brownlow Matthew Carter Paul Hastings

whipmedia.com/fastrack