NOISY AI

Marketers have been complaining about increasing media noise over the last 15-20 years. People have been watching more and more content, with pretty linear growth in viewing time, yet the amount of online video content has been exploding!

By 2050, I believe both trends will have continued. That may not sound mind-blowing, but trust me, it is, and MARKETERS NEED TO PAY ATTENTION!

The viewer-to-content ratio (viewers per piece of content created per year) will drop below 10 by 2050 if current trends continue. Breaking through the clutter will take something really special.

The spray-and-pray approach to content creation will have even less impact in the future than it does today – IN OTHER WORDS, IT WILL BE A COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME FOR BRANDS.

Organic reach will continue to fall, and soon it will fall off a cliff. Before I dive into why this is happening, let me offer what I believe is the right strategy for brands in this environment.

Focus on a few clear messages and create distinctive, short creatives that convey these messages uniquely. Keep saying the same thing in mind-blowing and creative ways.

And start today!

Let's get back to the numbers behind this:

Believe it or not, I expect our screen time to increase. We're becoming screen-bound creatures, and digital media is the glue. Look at this graph depicting past and potential future trends in media consumption—it’s practically a straight line shooting upward. And it doesn’t look like it’s going to plateau anytime soon. Have you ever wondered if we might start consuming media even in our sleep?

Imagine this: by 2050, "sleep media" could be a thing. With rapid advances in technology and our understanding of the brain, we might integrate media consumption seamlessly into our dreams. Picture diving into a virtual reality during REM sleep or learning new information through gentle brain stimulation while you snooze. Sounds like sci-fi, right? But considering the pace of innovation, it’s not entirely out of reach.

Transforming downtime into media time could shatter the boundaries of screen time, eclipsing the current 600 minutes a day. This shift would require revolutionary breakthroughs in neuroscience and technology, and address serious safety and health considerations.

Fast-forward to when these challenges are resolved: imagine curating your perfect dream each night or letting your AI assistant craft an unexpected, thrilling scenario for you. The potential expansion in media viewing time is both exciting and a bit unnerving.

But here is the bad news for marketeers, the growth of screen time is nothing compared to content available:

Do you think the media noise is bad today? Well, bad news: the explosion in digital content is just beginning. Over the past decade, video content has increased more than tenfold. With platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok fueling a video revolution, it's clear we're entering an era where the world will go video crazy.

But what will the future of media look like? We've witnessed several revolutions, from newspapers to radio, from TV to digital media. Yet, underlying these changes is a clear trend: the availability and choice of media are growing at an exponential rate.

AI will accelerate this development dramatically. We are maybe a year away from movie-making being totally democratized. Potential content creators who lacked technical ability or were too shy to expose themselves will be able to create 1:1 avatars and use GPTs to make endless amounts of videos with just a few prompts.

And yes, we will get billions of crummy videos and probably a few hundred thousand interesting ones.

However you twist and turn it, breaking through the clutter will become harder and harder, and revising your communication strategy today would be sound advice.