MIDiA Predictions 2016: Video Eats The World

With 2015 rapidly drawing to a close we have taken the opportunity to present the big trends that MIDiA Research believes will shape digital content and media in 2016.  The entire findings are available exclusively to MIDiA subscribers in the report: “MIDiA Research Predictions, 2016: Video Eats The World”. The report includes predictions for Music, Online Video and Mobile content as well as macro predictions. Here are some highlights of the macro trends we expect to shape paid content in 2016:

This decade has been defined by accelerating innovation and disruption.  With the majority of consumers now digitally connected in one way or another, new technologies have the ability to utterly transform existing models with a swiftness and totality not previously possible.  Digital disruptions no longer only affect your digital audiences yet at the same time markets evolve at different paces, with early adopters expecting ever more innovation and less adventurous consumers clinging onto incumbent platforms.

Consumers are adopting new technologies at unprecedented and accelerating rates.  It took more than 30 years for radio to reach audience maturity, 20 years for the internet, 10 years for the smartphone and just 4 years for messaging apps to do the same.  Never before have media industries been so quickly changed by technology. The pace will intensify in 2016 with 3 standout trends shaping the digital content marketplace:

• Messaging apps will accelerate: Mobile messaging apps like WhatsApp and Snapchat constitute one of the fastest growing segments of the entire consumer digital landscape and will number 6 billion monthly active users in 2016. Content companies of all types will need to define their messaging app strategy, because that is where they will find an ever larger share of their digital audiences.
• Video will eat the world: Back in 2011 Andreessen Horowitz’s Marc Andreessen argued ‘software is eating the world’.  Now video is seizing that mantle. The smartphone revolution has effectively put small TV screens with on-demand video libraries and full broadcast schedules in everyone’s hands.  Audiences now expect video to be everywhere, as part of their broader digital content consumption.  Short form video views hit 5.9 trillion in the first 3 quarters of 2015 alone.  Whatever media business you are in, in 2016 you will be a video company too.
• Re-aggregation will begin: 2015 saw more apps available (4.4 million) and more apps downloaded (90.5 billion) than ever before.  But this also brought unprecedented fragmentation of audiences and content experiences.  Re-aggregation will be the stage of this great unbundling process. In 2016 look out for the first signs of the usual suspects - i.e. Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google – looking for opportunities to join the digital dots with bundling of TV apps the first really big move.  The end game in all of this is owning as much of the data and transactions as possible of digital consumers.

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