What is the Future of Media Entertainment News Websites
Prior to the global pandemic, there was an increase in private equity and hedge fund M&A deals into traditional media outlets. At this time, over 2,000 such media brands in the form of print have been acquired throughout the US. Content and customer acquisition are very important strategies we can glean from firms with large amounts of capital. Merging similar media content offerings can
“There’s an agreement that the industry will be mostly digital within another four or five years,” Edmonds said. “The industry isn’t sitting on its heels, and it is making an effort to modernize.”
- Rick Edmonds, Poynter Institute
More and more traditional print media publication groups are digitizing their products and we are likely to see new and unique customer engagement models at the center of it all.
From the various firms focused on trend analysis to companies who are employing the latest technologies we see the future of media entertainment news sites doubling down on immersion. This is likely a near future play versus something consumers and trend trackers should expect far off from now.
“Media companies that reach across consumer sectors with a global network for content creation and consumption will be best positioned to capture, retain, and monetize high-volume consumer engagement.”
- Bain & Company
Bain & Company provide a very clear picture on the coming trends of how companies will deepen customer engagement. The following list highlights a few specific near future plays likely to start making their way into new media entertainment sites. Example use cases are used to illustrate the idea.
- Virtual Reality Content
- Site specific and Third Party NFTs
- Deep Consumer Insights
- Dynamic Consumer Suggestion Algorithms
Virtual Reality
We are seeing first hand how VR is playing a role in immersion and is considered a long term play for the technology. Gaming and adult entertainment, which seems to be two of the biggest market trends for its use, only scratch the surface of where companies are likely to go.
For some time, large real estate firms such as Sotheby’s International Realty allow their customers a more immersive experience in viewing real estate. With the help of TourFactory™ and their proprietary product iGuide®, Sotheby’s is able to present 3D virtual environments to their customers. With the use of keyboard controls users can navigate through the homes and their adjoining outside perimeters seamlessly. When companies like Vice or other investigative news companies adopt this technology into their story reporting process, viewers will be in for a real treat.
Example Use Case
You are on the Vice website and you have already consumed their basic audio visual content for an exclusive story. Next, they offer you the opportunity to use your VR goggles to virtually stand in the exact location they are reporting on; imagine a dangerous meth lab or distressed neighborhood. This is next level news media consumption. This is possible now.
“As technology advances, brands will likely employ NFTs in a number of use cases to enhance consumer experience and engagement. NFT growth can be driven by demand for access to decentralized ownership, as NFTs can be tied to real-life purchases to ensure authenticity of goods in primary and secondary markets. Further, NFTs could be used in concert with advertising to create powerful tools for marketing activation.”
- PWCs Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2022-2026
NFTs
With the right set of use cases, Non-Fungible Tokens have an opportunity to properly incentivize and reward customers, while creating deeper relationships between issuers and owners. Imagine third party advertisers embedding their ads on media entertainment sites with an augmented reality that doubles to share a token granting you special access to an online event or ownership of a digital good.
Example Use Case
Your mobile device camera hovers over your laptop to reveal Charmander or Pikachu. They animate out of the ad space and pass you a coin. Your mobile rings with an alert notifying you the token is now on your device and ready to use. The visual narrative teams who will be assigned to work on these projects will have a number of options. Creativity for greater immersion is the key.
Insights and Analytics
Deeper consumer insights are usually siloed. Meaning site owners only have access to the customer data their platforms gather. The same site owner may not be privy to what another site or online platform has collected. This disadvantages most companies to an extent, causing them to have to buy third party data to understand more about the customer. Although building a detailed customer profile is expensive and has become more of a regulatory challenge these days, companies remain data dependent.
Through media entertainment sites, companies may soon look to include their customers in the data gathering process. By incentivizing a network of loyal users to share more of their own information, companies will have exact details and more importantly, permission to know relevant consumer information. Sites and social platforms would look to compensate their customers financially for optimal effectiveness. These insight programs will provide users a deeper understanding of their consumption behaviors and further reinforce the information sharing relationship.
Suggestion
Competitive advantage can be more effective when site users stay in one place. Application Program Interfaces or APIs for short, can allow media entertainment sites to aggregate articles on similar topics from other sites. This would also allow readers to consume additional information on topics of interest to them in one place. Not to mention, this would become highly competitive against Google and other online search engines.
Essentially, there are a number of programs and technologies currently available to enhance online media entertainment offerings. The future of these sites is being more connected to their user base, not just through news content but through increasing ways and types of engagement scenarios. Immersion is the future of online engagement. Whether for educational, entertainment or business reasons. Immersion is the most likely engagement scenario with the most long term potential to build and sustain viewing audiences and win against media site competition.
About Dion:
Dion Wilson is the CEO and Co-Founder of Rast·r Technologies. He is a futurist and entrepreneur who enjoys technology, comic books, traditional art, media production and business. With a penchant for writing and discussion, he is driven to inform audiences of how things work. https://linkedin.com/in/dw3
References
Breaking news: only 30% of the news on comics news sites is actually about comics
Newsarama ASSIMILATED into Gaming Site! Comic Book News DOESN’T PAY!
Measurement Giant Nielsen Sold to Private-Equity Group for $16 Billion
https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/nielsen-sold-private-equity-measurement-media-1235217649/
Media M&A: Deepening Customer Engagement through Adjacencies
https://www.bain.com/insights/media-m-and-a-report-2022/
Global Edia Outlook 2022-20226
https://www.pwc.com/us/en/industries/tmt/library/global-entertainment-media-outlook.html
Agencies Agree; 2021 Was A Record Year For Ad Spending, With More Growth Expected In 2022
TourFactory Website
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