The pandemic completely disrupted the entire content supply chain. On-site teams had to work remotely suddenly, events were canceled, and as a result, everyone scrambled to understand how to continue business as usual in this new environment. Many adapted, using cloud tools to keep their teams connected and collaborating.

But above all, it taught us that the old way of moving through content supply chains needs to be evolved to handle future disruptions and ensure we are positioned to capitalize on new revenue opportunities like the metaverse when they arise. To solve the inadequacies of today's supply chains, content creators and IP owners need to take a hard look at how they can incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into their productions.

AI is a must-have for modern content supply chains

The past five years have made clear: AI is business-critical for organizations that want to stay relevant, agile, and healthy. According to PwC, over 50% of companies accelerated their AI adoption plans because of the COVID-19 crisis. In addition, ABI Research estimates that the media and entertainment industry will spend $16.5 billion by 2026 on AI and machine learning (ML). AI adoption in the broadcast world is gaining momentum as well, according to IBC.

But how exactly does AI apply to the content supply chain? Looking at the nine steps or phases identified in IABM’s BaM Content Chain^®, AI is already playing in all areas. From a content creation perspective, synthetic voice technology, which uses AI and deep learning techniques to create voice clones, is gaining traction with voice talent and the audio world. Audio creators, from traditional radio to podcasters, brands, and TV and film producers, can start localizing content to enter new markets, opening new revenue and engagement opportunities.

With all the buzz around the metaverse, media and entertainment brands across categories have started planning or executing their content strategy for this growing space. For example, avatars, which are realistic 3D creations of individuals, are being leveraged to build digital personas for brands, influencers, celebrities, and athletes.

In this conversation, non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, also serve a purpose but don't necessarily use AI depending on the minting process and the selected blockchain. However, they are a vital content component that brands use to engage with consumers in the metaverse. AI will be foundational in supporting asset and IP  management, data processing of digital interactions, and realistic audio and visual synthetic creations.

The BaM Content Chain processes of Produce, Manage and Publish all sit within a continuum that utilizes AI, especially when considering the management and distribution of live content. In the motorsport racing world, AI is already used from a broadcaster, partner, and racing team perspective. Live content can, in near-real time, be enriched with metadata so that it's organized effectively from the outset, accelerating distribution to the media and marketing teams that need this content to drive fan engagement.

AI will uncover new opportunities otherwise left unfound

The BaM Content Chain's last four phases (Consume, Connect, Store, and Support) are where things get exciting. While streamlining operations provides many net benefits, every road leads to revenue. And to uncover new opportunities also means understanding what's working and where innovation is needed. But first, let's talk about the monetization piece.

The benefits of leveraging AI on the supply chain's front end directly impact how well you can monetize your content. IP owners can establish their own licensing business using AI to tag content so that it's easily discoverable by end users, from documentary filmmakers to broadcasters to fans. While this requires content to be digitized, it enables content creators to leverage their entire archives rather than the assets they are aware of today. Older brands might be sitting on content they didn't know existed. Such was the case with Veritone client, the San Francisco Giants, who were able to use our AI solution to uncover footage to celebrate baseball legend Willie Mays that had been sitting on the shelf.

Revisiting content localization, most creators start in the English market because that's the largest. But by expanding outward into other regions, you can unlock new revenue opportunities. While CPMs will vary depending on the market, these are dollars digital audio creators are leaving on the table. Looking at just the English and Spanish markets, the opportunity is more than a 100% increase in potential ad revenue if you assume several factors such as number of downloads, average CPM, number of ads served, and number of newly created episodes per month.

AI also helps with Connect and Store when you consider how AI plays into creating automated workflows and processes across tools. From the consumption perspective, leveraging AI to process vast amounts of structured and unstructured data will offer new insights into how consumers engage and consume content. These insights will inevitably inform content creators about what types of content they should create, in what formats,  and on what platforms.

Lastly, AI can support not only the automation of computing all content-centric data, but it can help ensure facilities are correctly planning and optimizing how they are using energy, which will only continue to become more of a priority as consumers care more about how companies are addressing their impact on the environment.

Adopting AI doesn't have to be all at once

With AI touching the entire content supply chain, it can be overwhelming to figure out how to get started. The best place to start is one or two areas that are significant bottlenecks or pain points for you today. Once AI enters your content supply chain, you'll quickly notice other areas of the business where you can extend these capabilities, helping you scale as you need without feeling you need to make a costly investment up front.

One of the best parts of AI is that you do not need to necessarily rip and replace your existing technology stack but instead can add pieces to fill gaps or ingest AI into your current ecosystem. As a result, the technology lends itself to the flexibility of the business’s needs at any given time, helping companies adopt faster and make those incremental changes over time to harden operations for a future that's already knocking at the front door. 

After several years of false starts owing largely to the global impact of the pandemic, 2022 is set to be the year where the 5G ecosystem really starts to take off. The consumer side is now essentially a given — Apple’s new 2022 iPhone SE, for instance, is among the 2022 units offering 5G connectivity in the sub $500 bracket — and, as the year rolls on, we will start to see a significant increase in contribution and remote live production use cases. 5G enabled media workflows will not be confined to outlier events either, but will reach across the entertainment landscape.

From content to consumer

5G is set to have an accelerating effect on every area of the media supply chain, from the generation of content all the way through to the delivery to the consumer where the increase in bandwidth at the point of consumption can enable new immersive video experiences.

The cumulative impact is going to be immense, as each component of the media supply chain is accelerated.

There will be greater amounts of content at a higher quality, flowing faster bi-directionally – not just to the consumer, but back to and/or between organizations as well. There is an enormous democratization of high-quality content creation underway. Tools and techniques that were once the domain of high-end industry specific equipment have been first usurped by IP-based technologies and then the cloud, effectively putting them into the hands of everyone. Porting all this to 5G removes the last technical barrier, and with increasing adoption of cloud ‘as-a-Service’ business models, more people have access to broadcast grade technology than ever before.

5G is an enabler for cloud adoption, and cloud broadcast infrastructure allows media companies and service providers to quickly leverage SaaS solutions to ingest and distribute live video over IP. This delivers premium quality with ultra-low latency and the flexibility and scale to add new models for engaging audiences.

As part of the whole process of rolling out 5G, global carriers are looking to enhance value for their customers by switching to Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC). It uses cellular networks based around 5G for its primary connectivity, which is far more efficient in delivering a massive increase in the number of connected devices and systems that can be supported as opposed to via a traditional cloud architecture. MEC helps lower latency and increase throughput, and, as such, provides further acceleration to broadcasters’ plans.

This will be boosted by the ramping up of the cellular rollout. For specific use cases in the sports and events arena, leading venues have already overseen their own successful 5G deployments and the number of urban deployments is rising all the time. The confident expectation is that the 5G cellular infrastructure will start to grow exponentially as 5G’s implications for users are realized and adopted.

It’s important to remember that the drivers for that growth are legion, from our own broadcast industry use cases to Industry 4.0, infrastructure deployments and the full realization of the promise of the Internet of Things. For the last link in the media supply chain, the consumer, 5G will have profound consequences. Media will become ubiquitous, environments will become more immersive and bandwidth will scale to previously unimagined speeds while at the same time latency will fall through the floor.

To be honest, as an industry we have yet to scratch the surface of how all this will change technology, application, and how consumers interact with media but the smart money is on disruptive wearable devices emerging that basically immerse the consumer in an always-on 5G ecosystem and provide new classes of functionality.

Making it all work

Under the hood, one area that is likely to see rapid innovation is monetization. Nothing about 5G is coming cheap and organizations will look to monetize their offerings and add value at multiple intersections all along the supply chain to achieve ROI. These don’t have to be large transactions - because of the speed with which the networks will work a myriad of small-scale interactions can be put in place. For example, teams could sell an AR selfie taken with a driver in the cockpit of a F1 car, or clubs offer in stadia real-time bets on whether a penalty will be scored to the fans in the crowd. Gamification is going to be one of the key concepts here, as media companies look to make video relevant to a generation brought up on instant interactions and gratification via mobile devices.

It’s worth pointing out that the amount of data this will all generate is orders of magnitude above what we have seen before. As a result, we will see some serious investment made in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) deployments that will examine the volume of data and extrapolate patterns from it. The net result, intriguingly, might be to offer consumers experiences that they didn’t even know they wanted or that the industry had never even considered. Data analysis has become increasingly vital to all businesses in recent years, and as developments in AI and ML also accelerate during 2022, it is going to become absolutely mission critical.

The legal framework that supports all this is going to be interesting to monitor. Privacy legislation such as Europe’s GDPR is spreading worldwide, and how the data exchanges that will form the mesh in which 5G-enabled devices sit are both policed and regulated is going to be one of the main challenges of establishing 5G ecosystems.

Add it all together and you have a fascinating mix. The opportunities of 5G are immense, but some of the use cases that will serve as its killer apps are still unknown, and there are definite challenges to its rollout both in terms of investment and in terms of regulation. In many respects, it is similar to the very early days of the internet when everything was very much in play from a technical and a business point of view. But unlike that era, which took several years to reach what you could term a mass-market proposition, the 5G one will deploy in the full glare of worldwide expectation from day one. It’s going to be a fascinating few years…