Andreas Jacobi, CEO and Co-founder of Make.TV – the live video cloud and a division of LTN Global – has shared five media trends that he believes will define 2020.

1. Cloud applications will optimise the gig economy for video contributors: It’s currently a difficult and slow process for a stringer to contribute video to a media network. They need to be contracted, turn up to a location, shoot video and upload the file – which even on the fastest networks can take a significant amount of time. As more media companies move to cloud applications, stringers will be able to contribute video to the network at the press of a button, instantly and from anywhere. This paves the way for both timely and hyper-local news development as well as a gig economy of video contributors and network collaborators.
2. Less prohibitive costs will open up the market to smaller players and niche creators: The speed and cost efficiency associated with the cloud and the ability of going direct to consumer via OTT platforms will significantly lower the bar to entry for smaller content publishers. New technologies will allow publishers to bypass the multimillion dollar infrastructure investments previously required to broadcast content. The lower cost will allow smaller and niche content players to not only enter the market but also compete with much larger organisations.
3. AI will personalise content consumption and open up more opportunity to create viable businesses around niche content: The vast amount of content being produced is increasing every day and we are now able to generate a great deal of metadata from both the content and audience behaviour. As data becomes more ubiquitous, we’ll start to see AI being deployed to help to filter the collected metadata. We’ll also see the deployment of smarter EPGs that will personalise offerings to the individual viewer and drive media to create much more niche content.
4. Lesson learnt from eSports: platform agnostic distribution will lead the way:  ESL’s ability to reach a global audience of 230 million across 70 different destinations from its tournament series in Katowice shows that the global demand for esports will continue to increase into 2020. The rise of eSports is a blueprint for the broadcasting industry especially when it comes to dealing with audience fragmentation. End-to-end solutions have shown to simplify and streamline the content distribution process without compromising on quality. We anticipate that in 2020, more traditional broadcasters and niche content providers will adopt a similar platform agnostic content distribution strategy  in order to expand their reach and monetisation opportunities.
5. The 5G hype will continue: 5G is not just a simple network update. We are entering the most transformative phase in telecom history and its impact on the media industry is yet to be realised. Ericsson predicts that by the end of 2024, 5G subscriptions will reach 1.9 billion, 35 per cent of internet traffic will be carried by 5G networks and up to 65 per cent of the global population could be covered by the technology. The promise of 5G is bound to drive a stepchange in the operational workflows of the media industry because of network slicing management and prioritisation – something that its 4G predecessor could not do. By prioritising signals coming from news teams, 5G would give media networks the confidence to report from the most highly congested locations, such as sports stadiums, music festivals – even Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

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