July 14, 2017
Technological change has become a constant – and the pace is only accelerating. This spring, NYC Media Lab’s inaugural Machines + Media conference brought together a cross-section of the media industry at Bloomberg headquarters in New York to look at how technology is changing the way media is produced, distributed and consumed.
The event focused on present and future developments of data science applications, such as natural language generation, automatic video production, personalization and recommendations. Following the event, NYC Media Lab and Bloomberg’s Office of the CTO collaborated on a white paper detailing “How AI is Changing Media Economics,” released this week.
Highlights from the white paper offer key insights on what the future holds for media companies:
“Yesterday’s media business models were aimed at mass distribution of content, but today, it’s the niche markets that matter. That’s because in today’s oversaturated media ecosystem, consumer attention is the ultimate finite resource.”
“To successfully cultivate their loyal fans across a distributed network of platforms, companies are leveraging AI in a number of interesting ways.”
“…AI optimization now occurs at every level throughout the media sector, and is the successor to predictive analytics. Whereas yesterday’s executives were content to have machines simply forecast, today’s management expects it to also take action.”
“AI… makes for an incredibly quick feedback loop. Media companies, from film studios to news organizations, have more insights into what drives ROI and in many cases need very few inputs to predict the success of books, ads and media of all variety. And once released, the feedback on media is near instantaneous: the half-life of a Facebook post is only 5 hours, a mere blink of an eye compared to 20th-century feedback systems. This makes media brands more nimble. In an industry that’s classically been defined by its high up-front fixed costs (think paying authors in advance for a new novel) and relied on fixed strategies (think staggering DVD releases after theater releases), the media industry can take an iterative approach, test more, and improve faster.”
Read the full paper on NYC Media Lab’s site or watch video from the conference on YouTube.
Follow: @TechAtBloomberg
– Jen Robinson | July 14, 2017