“The M&E market for physically challenged is unexplored”

By Nishant Rathi

Surviving the pandemic has not been easy for anyone. Fighting it out bravely, be it indoors or outdoors, has been tedious. The only way to keep ourselves pepped up and deviate attention from the pandemic blues was resorting to digital media and entertainment platforms offering diverse, meaningful, and quality video content. Not that these platforms were unpopular earlier, but now the responsibility had grown much bigger.

Harnessing the latest technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and smart algorithms, this sector today has evolved to identify and deliver content based on user choices. Technology has been playing a dynamic role here. It has three major expectations to meet: to keep renewing the focus on customers’ needs, to converge and remix the benchmarks of entertainment, and to monetize wireless networks.

Blockchain, AR/VR, voice search technology, facial recognition, AI, and cloud security are the key technologies that are transforming this sector at a larger scale.

Blockchain, AR/VR, voice search technology, facial recognition, AI, and cloud security are the key technologies that are transforming this sector at a larger scale. It will not be a surprise if this vertical curve keeps going beyond its threshold while in pursuit of digital transformation.

M&E challenges and solutions

Content privacy, muddled analytics, and data privacy seem to be the core challenges at the present moment. The most crucial challenge for this industry is content privacy because that’s the single most valuable commodity that they harp upon. A single leak and the loss can be tremendous. Muddled analytics is another arising issue because of multiple users sharing a single account. It makes it tough for the algorithms to make accurate content predictions and recommendations, thus affecting the overall experience of their service.

As with any digital-based service, maintaining users’ data privacy is a concern in this sector as well. Moreover, users prefer to divulge the least amount of personal data which again affects the algorithms working on user profiling and recommending.

With the technological advancements that are being witnessed, the challenges can be overcome with creativity and innovation. With interfaces that are built to be aesthetic and intuitive, backed with algorithms powered by AI and machine learning (ML), the service providers stand a greater chance to keep their viewers engaged and not lose them to slow-loading web portals or hard-to-spot CTAs.

Personalization can become easy through innovation for the provision of supporting multiple user profiles within a single account, much like Netflix, and harnessing deep learning to analyse usage history and offer recommendations that are the closest match like Spotify. Tackling content piracy has also been possible by restricting capturing of content via screenshots and screen recordings while using these platforms or apps.

There is a complete niche of unexplored market for media targeted to the physically challenged or disabled. Technology can easily help bridge this access gap.

Opportunities and future outlook

With every provider having access to the same technology and same real-time updates and more or less the same facilities, it takes much more than qualified to make a mark. However, that is not to say that there aren’t any opportunities. User patterns are drastically shifting, much more quickly due to pandemics than ever. However, there is still a dearth of services that are universally accessible.

There is a complete niche of unexplored market for media and entertainment targeted to the physically challenged or disabled. Technology can easily help bridge this access gap with intelligent closed-captioning, text-to-speech facilities, and disabled-friendly haptic output.

With AI already creating ripples, the future is already near. The forthcoming years will see the presently nascent data analytics technology progressing and being realised to its complete potential. What holds exciting prospects from the technology point of view in the field of media and entertainment is AR/VR and the avenues that are barely opened in this realm. It stands to embark on what can be aptly called the entertainment of the senses. With games like Pokémon Go already setting the precedent, it won’t be long before we will have immersive role-play-based games that can be played out in the real world.

As and how our medium of communication changes – from voice to multimedia to rich, engaging visuals, to whatever the future holds – similarly will the media of entertainment and gaming evolve. We only know that it will be unseen and it will be immensely exciting from the tech point of view.

Rathi is CEO & Founder at NeoSOFT Technologies