Personalization, Privacy, and Immersive Experiences: Turning Disruption into Opportunity for Content, Commerce, and Connection

The media and entertainment industry is being reshaped as AI becomes embedded across core operations, powering content creation, editing, recommendations, advertising, and compliance, while unified models enable real-time personalization across platforms. As privacy regulations tighten and third-party cookies decline, enterprises are prioritizing first-party data, secure data architectures, and strong consent frameworks to maintain trust and compliance. Monetization is shifting toward ad-supported streaming, free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels, and retail media, driving the convergence of content, commerce, and advertising through shoppable formats and retail partnerships. At the same time, rising competition and costs are accelerating the bundling, aggregation, and consolidation of services, with alliances and mergers enhancing scale, resilience, customer experience, and retention. Interactive engagement through gaming, esports, AR/VR, and phygital experiences is becoming central to strategy, supported by stronger verification, content provenance, IP protection, and fraud controls to ensure sustainable, brand-safe growth.

Both demand- and supply-side trends are covered in Avasant’s Media and Entertainment Digital Services 2025–2026 Market Insights™ and Media and Entertainment Digital Services 2025–2026 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, challengers, and tech pioneers in this market.

We evaluated 40 service providers across two dimensions: practice maturity and future proofing. Of the 40 providers, we recognized 24 that brought the most value to the market during the past 12 months.

The reports recognize service providers across five categories:

• • Leaders: Accenture, Capgemini, HCLTech, Infosys, TCS, and Tech Mahindra
  • Innovators: Cognizant, Genpact, IBM, LTIMindtree, and Wipro
  • Disruptors: EPAM, NTT DATA, and Virtusa
  • Challengers: Atos, CGI, Ness Digital Engineering, Persistent Systems, UST, and WNS
  • Tech Pioneers: Adobe, Epic Games, NVIDIA, Salesforce

The figure below from the full report illustrates these categories:

“Media and entertainment firms are adopting AI for personalization and privacy to change how content is created, delivered, and monetized,” said Sahaj Kumar, associate research director at Avasant. “Companies are adopting immersive experiences, robust compliance, and new monetization models to meet changing consumer needs and regulations.”

The reports provide several findings, including the following:

• • Enterprises are enabling AI-powered personalization at scale through secure, privacy-first data foundations across the media enterprise.
  • Media companies are driving ad-supported and commerce-focused monetization through data-driven, privacy-first advertising foundations across the media enterprise.
  • Enterprises are driving scale and resilience through streaming consolidation and bundles.
  • Companies are delivering interactive and phygital fan experiences through unified immersive platforms across the media enterprise.
  • Organizations are building trusted and safe digital engagement through verification, consent, and content authenticity frameworks.

“With content creation and distribution converging, the services industry has evolved to deliver holistic, technology-enabled solutions,” said Saugata Sengupta, partner at Avasant. “Providers are embedding strong safeguards and collaborating with clients to enhance customer satisfaction.”

The RadarView also features detailed profiles of 24 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 Avasant’s Media and Entertainment Digital Services 2025–2026 Market Insights™ and Media and Entertainment Digital Services 2025–2026 RadarView™. (Click for pricing.)