People still want the TV and movie experience offered by traditional studios, but social platforms are becoming competitive for their entertainment time—and even more competitive for the business models that studios have relied on. Social video platforms offer a seemingly endless variety of free content, algorithmically optimized for engagement and advertising. They wield advanced ad tech and AI to match advertisers with global audiences, now drawing over half of US ad spending. As the largest among them move into the living room, will they be held to higher standards of quality?
At the same time, the streaming on-demand video (SVOD) revolution has fragmented pay TV audiences, imposed higher costs on studios now operating direct-to-consumer services, and delivered thinner margins for their efforts. It can be a tougher business, yet the premium video experience offered by streamers often sets the bar for quality storytelling, acting, and world-building. How can studios control costs, attract advertisers, and compete for attention? Are there stronger points of collaboration that can benefit both streamers looking to reach global audiences and social platforms that lack high-quality franchises?
This year’s Digital Media Trends lends data to the argument that video entertainment has been disrupted by social platforms, creators, user-generated content (UGC), and advanced modeling for content recommendations and advertising. Such platforms may be establishing the new center of gravity for media and entertainment, drawing more of the time people spend on entertainment and the money that brands spend to reach them.
Our survey of US consumers reveals that media and entertainment companies—including advertisers—are competing for an average of six hours of daily media and entertainment time per person (figure 1). And this number doesn’t seem to be growing.2 Not only is it unlikely that any one form of media will command all six hours, but each user likely has a different mix of SVOD, UGC, social, gaming, music, podcasts, and potentially other forms of digital media that make up these entertainment hours.
Over the years I always hear people in real life tell me how much they loved Parasite, Fight Club, Being John Malkovich, Harold and Maude, Everything Everywhere at Once. They never seem to be able to find movies they like. They never put much effort finding things they’d like
They’re all movies that are from indie filmmakers that managed to get mainstream recognition. Movies like O Brother Where Art Thou, There Will Be Blood, Pulp Fiction, etc. Auteur led movies making original movies. There are tens of thousands of movies being made with passion outside of just return on investment a year. Uncut Gems had some popularity some years ago.
I can confidently say with certainty that at least a couple hundred a year are good to great. Almost none of them make more than like $5 million at the box office worldwide in their release year. Most barely get screens and even in AMCs they show to theaters of like 3 people
Discovery issue but also even marketed with great trailers, people aren’t going taking the risk of being disappointed. Either it goes viral or people aren’t watching it. Japanese movies to non-Japanese people might as well just be anime adaptations and the latest Godzilla movie
Korean movies was for a period just Old boy to people that googled and then just Parasite. Maybe the Wailing.
Every other country in the US may as well not exist when it comes to movies. Like 1000 feature length movies a year from the US but the only ones people know are like 5 blockbusters a year where they may watch 2 and then when the Oscars come around they learn of a handful of indie movies and maybe try the best picture winner. That’s it. Even a movie they like, they can’t come up with the idea of seeing who directed or wrote it and see what else they’ve done. We can complain about studios all we want but time and time again we are shown that the general consumer including the whiners in here will not try to find what isn’t already popular. Same with music, television, books, etc.
Unless it has a cookie cutter easy to see the appeal hook, very few people will show up. Celebrities they think are attractive and action. Way more competition now though. I don’t think romance movies are major anymore. Plenty of good content, you just don’t know it and you don’t take risks. That includes everyone complaining about Netflix. There’s plenty on there and Amazon Prime. There’s plenty that hits the AMC or other major chain. You just don’t watch it. You’re a part of the problem.
Do you have recommendations for fixing discoverability? I can browse by category on streaming apps, but that just shows the top ten or twenty titles. Beyond that it’s search by name or scroll alphabetically.