Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
The team has been gathering views and useful reports on trends to watch since 2010, providing us with insight on the media landscape for our clients and brands. In previous years the team focused on wearable technology, smart TVs, renting vs. buying, as well as the increasing use of emoji’s, and by and large they called things correctly.
This year’s report focuses around two bigger themes: the rising influence of larger ecosystems in media and the nascent developments in artificial intelligence. A short overview of the main topics is available below. Read the full report here for more examples and possible implications for our clients.
Rise of competing ecosystems
Thinking about competing ecosystems is a good way to think about the media landscape. We’re seeing a return to the idea of ‘walled gardens’ or portals, as typified by AOL in the late 1990s, but this time on mobile and in apps, with services like Snapchat and Facebook trying to hold on to their users for as long as possible.
It’s becoming harder to reach audiences with ads, through the rise of both paid, ad-free content from Netflix and others, and also the rise of ad blockers allowing people to view websites with none of the ads that pay for the content.
Mobile searches now outnumber desktop searches. As a result, search is evolving to become more personalised to the user and the device. It’s now becoming possible to search within apps and not just the web, and a new breed of apps is emerging to push information to you to take away the need to search.
Messaging apps are now the fastest growing part of the social world, and are evolving from their just written conversations with friends. In particular, WeChat in China is trying to become a hub platform where other apps can run on, becoming the first place to go to book a taxi, shop online and even report problems to the local government.
Maps can be seen as ecosystems for exploring the real world. As mobile becomes the most important device, there is increasing competition within mapping and location with Google, Apple, car companies and others trying to ensure that they can differentiate themselves through how they plot and navigate the space around us.
Artificial intelligence
There are lots of developments that can be categorised as improvements in artificial intelligence.
Image recognition has become more accurate and more useful. For instance, apps like Blippar, which used to just identify logos, are now starting to identify objects (like fruit) with more accuracy. A development that is also crucial for other future technology like self-driving cars.
Sentiment has always been hard to track on social media, because people are sarcastic, slang and so on. But emoji’s are making it easier to determine how people feel – as they encourage people to be more open about it. Both Facebook and Twitter are rumoured to be making it easier for people to use other emoji’s to add more nuance to ‘Likes’
Pricing is becoming more complex as real time data is used. The classic example of this is Uber’s surge pricing, where tariffs rise during pick times, but there are lots of other examples of companies challenging the concepts of uniform prices for everyone at all times.