The DPP has published its annual predictions report, now in its eighth year. The report contains eight business focused predictions and explores themes that will dominate the media and broadcast agenda in the year ahead.
Enabled by DPP member company Zixi, the DPP 2024 Predictions were drawn up by 30 industry practitioners — people who shape and run all kinds of media businesses.
Download the DPP 2024 Predictions
The experts, representing major content providers and their suppliers from industry innovators, agreed that technical and business flexibility, a focus on costs and margins, and managing an influx of corporate — and unsanctioned — artificial intelligence tools would be the major themes shaping the next 12 months.
“The DPP 2024 Predictions shows an industry greatly impacted by more than a decade of disruption and digital transformation, and which is now in a state of relative limbo,” says DPP Editorial Director Edward Qualtrough, the report author.
“Traditional revenue streams are being eroded, but the new digital delivery models have largely failed to provide a viable commercial alternative. The logical response, therefore, has been to aspire to be in a position where it can respond to whatever new situation or trend might suddenly take off.”
"The DPP 2024 Predictions shows an industry greatly impacted by more than a decade of disruption and digital transformation, and which is now in a state of relative limbo and caught between consolidation and innovation."
Artificial intelligence is on the minds of industry experts enough that contributors proposed two predictions on the subject. First, that ‘employees will take GenAI into their own hands’ leading to the rise of ‘Shadow AI’ — staff procuring their own AI tools outside of what has been mandated by the CIO or tech function, or the capabilities already baked into corporate applications.
And secondly that ‘the lawyers are coming for AI’ — whereby regulatory institutions and governments will not decide the fate of AI adoption since they are generally slower to respond to business and consumer trends. Instead major issues will be settled in the courts, with lawyers and judges having a greater impact on how artificial intelligence is used.
Transformation as a term dropped off the agenda, in favour of adaptability and agility. DPP members put forward fewer technical industry predictions with debates largely settled about the use of cloud and IP in the industry. The prevailing mentality media organisations have adopted therefore is to try and reach a position of technical modularity, and flexibility of business and commercial models.
Zixi CEO Gordon Brooks, who was one of the participants in the lively discussion when DPP members created the predictions, said:
"2023 was incredibly tough for the industry, with everything from inflation and the cost of capital to the drive for profitability. In 2024 there is a lot of optimism in the proliferation of live sports from new live IP streaming platforms, and organisations developing a proper data strategy as AI/ML and advanced analytics become more important to what media businesses are trying to achieve.
"In 2024 there is a lot of talk around AI, but less so about Cloud and IP, because the industry has fully accepted the transition and are deploying complex workflows. Where we were previously predicting that tech innovations were going to go mainstream, it’s already happening.
Gordon Brooks, Zixi CEO
"That inherently provides agility and flexibility — where everything is software-defined rather than hardware-based with variable infrastructure compared to fixed investment. This enables organisations different opportunities to monetise their assets and the flexibility to react when markets change."
The DPP 2024 Predictions report is free and open for everyone to download here.
The next DPP report to be published later in February 2024 is an in-depth exploration of artificial intelligence titled 'AI in Media: What does good look like?'
