Connections

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a substantial impact on all aspects of our business and the industry as a whole. But the pace of business has not slowed; it’s just changed.

Media and entertainment companies have had to adapt their workflows, infrastructure and resources in light of stay-at-home measures, remote-working requirements and temporarily shuttered industries. With these changes have come new and different opportunities, and progressive M&E companies are using technology to meet these challenges and continue to produce content creatively.

THE POWER OF SAAS

Innovation and adoption of new technologies are happening faster than ever, and M&E is ripe for taking advantage of software-as-a-service (SaaS). This technology allows software to be serviced over the cloud, eliminating the need for costly servers, difficult installation and exorbitant license fees.

SaaS products have taken off in the preceding decade and will continue to thrive as remote working has become a must for M&E companies of all sizes.

New products are allowing M&E companies to take a hard look at how they use innovation to enhance their business, improve efficiencies, save money and drive more revenue. In many cases, artificial intelligence (AI) can improve speed, efficiency and distribution.

COVID-19 has catapulted us into a new digital, virtual economy. Companies that can be nimble and use digital technology such as AI to work remotely and reinvent their workflows will win.

NEW TECHNOLOGIES IN PRACTICE

Media companies are exploring remote content distribution and sales channels, enabling sales teams and research teams to work remotely. Production companies and TV networks have a large volume of assets in multiple locations, and they need creative and collaborative tools to reduce manual tasks, boost editorial collaboration and increase rapid delivery of content.

As well, all media companies need to have the content they handle hyper-indexed (and therefore intelligent) for customization purposes. By using recommendation engines, hyper-indexing and AI, companies can leverage the metadata associated with their content to better serve customized content.

In practice, a news organization can tag its assets with relevant metadata when ingesting that video into a digital asset management (DAM) or media asset management (MAM) platform, such as Veritone Digital Media Hub. Later, when looking to leverage its content featuring one specific subject, news anchor or program, they can be more specific with clipping highlights.

You can use an AI-enabled solution to find footage of breaking news segments, historical moments or the like.

GETTING IN THE LOOP

AI isn’t here to replace human employees; rather, it’s here to make the human’s job easier so they can work faster and more strategically.

To make the AI work, you need to put a human “on the loop,” so to speak. Using the above example, a content tagger looking for a historical news moment can utilize AI to automate some of that work so they’re effectively monitoring what the AI is doing and getting better results, faster. This frees the worker to do more, add new duties to their job and work in ways they’ve never dreamed possible because AI improves their workflows and redefines their job functions.

YES, CONTENT IS STILL KING

Not everything has changed in the era of COVID-19. If anything, the notion that “content is king” (or queen) has increased.

Consumer consumption habits have changed during the pandemic, as people are stuck at home more and are consuming more radio, TV, podcasts, video games and any other content you could imagine.

M&E companies are still finding ways to produce and deliver content faster and more creatively than ever.

As more content is produced and consumed, data associated with all that content will need to be absorbed and analyzed, and we need critical insights from that content to be able to draw further insights and power recommendation engines.

LOOKING AHEAD

Now and in the future, production crews of all kinds will need to figure out who really needs to be onsite and who can do their work remotely, not only in light of health risks, but to maximize time, travel, expense and work-life-balance concerns.

Creatives on all sides will continue to look to pre-existing content that they can license for projects, from establishing shots to landscapes and cityscapes.

Companies will expand their use of AI to enhance workflows and improve job functions in an effort to move faster, distribute more content and earn more revenue.

There is more content than at any time in the history of the world, with more distribution methods than ever.

Distribution needs to be achieved quickly and remotely. Content must be trackable and searchable in order to be fully maximized — and perpetually monetized.

And technology is key to helping us keep up with this new, accelerated digital economy.

* By Drew Hilles, SVP, Veritone

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