Media and Entertainment Digital Services: Leveraging Digital Technology to Drive Innovation and Bolster Customer Experience

To adapt to evolving customer demands, media and entertainment (M&E) firms are investing in digital technologies to provide personalized and immersive content to users and enhance the customer experience. In addition, regulatory requirements and customer preference for climate-conscious firms are compelling M&E enterprises to embrace ESG as a fundamental way of doing business. As a result, M&E companies are utilizing emerging technologies to offer low-latency immersive content and enhance customer experience while mitigating churn.

Both demand- and supply-side trends are covered in Avasant’s Media and Entertainment Digital Services 2023–2024 Market Insights™ and Media and Entertainment Digital Services 2023–2024 RadarView™, respectively. These reports present a comprehensive study of digital service providers in the media and entertainment industry, including top trends, analysis, and recommendations. The reports also take a close look at the leaders, innovators, disruptors, and challengers in this market.

We evaluated 25 service providers across three dimensions: practice maturity, investments and innovation, and partner ecosystem. Of the 25 providers, we recognized 19 that brought the most value to the market during the past 12 months.

The reports recognize service providers across four categories:

• • Leaders: Accenture, Capgemini, HCLTech, Infosys, TCS, and Wipro
  • Innovators: Cognizant, IBM, LTIMindtree, and Tech Mahindra
  • Disruptors: Atos, Birlasoft, EPAM, Genpact, and Persistent Systems
  • Challengers: CGI, Harman Connected Services, Tata Communications, and Virtusa

Figure 1 below from the full report illustrates these categories:

“Media enterprises are being compelled to enhance the customer experience,” said Rob Devers, Avasant senior fellow and principal. “They must embrace emerging technologies to provide new offerings around AR/VR and metaverse, as well as ensure low latency streaming of content using the cloud.”

The reports provide several findings, including the following:

• • Enterprises are leveraging AI and analytics to enhance customer experiences and mitigate churn. Technological leverage will help increase customer loyalty, decrease churn rate over time, and improve profitability amid stiff competition.
  • M&E enterprises are meeting evolving customer demands by leveraging metaverse and AR/VR. As customers, especially the Gen Z ones, are seeking more immersive content, companies are leveraging AR/VR to enable immersive experiences and using the metaverse to create vivid, lifelike experiences for their audiences.
  • Enterprises are overcoming legacy challenges and enhancing operational efficiencies by utilizing cloud and automation, enabling businesses to scale, optimize costs, and improve efficiency across the media supply chain.
  • M&E firms are leveraging emerging technologies to create new revenue streams for themselves and content creators. Enterprises are adopting technologies like NFT to create new revenue streams using their existing intellectual property.
  • M&E companies are using technology to embrace ESG business practices for brand enhancement and regulatory compliance. Firms are adopting several ESG initiatives, such as reducing carbon emissions and energy intake.

“Providers are responding to evolving customer demands digitally,” said Praveen Kona, associate research director with Avasant. “By leveraging new-age technologies, such as AR/VR and metaverse, providers are developing offerings around immersive live events and cloud-enabled infrastructure optimization.”

The RadarView also features detailed profiles of 19 service providers, along with their solutions, offerings, and experience in assisting media and entertainment enterprises in their digital transformation journeys.

This Research Byte is a brief overview of the Media and Entertainment Digital Services 2023–2024 Market Insights™ and Media and Entertainment Digital Services 2023–2024 RadarView™ (click for pricing).