In just a few weeks’ time, the global media and entertainment industry will convene at the RAI in Amsterdam for this year’s IBC. As usual, technology innovations and new business models will be on show, along with the usual presence of informative and influential speakers.
Since this newsletter is dedicated to the companies that are to be found in the Content Everywhere zone in Hall 5, it is again an opportune time to ask the exhibitors to reflect back over the period since the previous IBC in September 2024, and highlight some of the key industry trends that are affecting their businesses.
To be sure, it has not been an easy twelve months on a number of levels. Lelde Ardava, COO of Veset, points out that the industry has faced some “difficult headwinds over the last year with global economic uncertainty and tariff pressures having an impact”.
She also notes that audiences are “becoming increasingly fragmented, competition has increased as the OTT industry comes close to saturation, consumers are viewing content across an ever-increasing number of platforms, which is technically challenging, and new technology, particularly AI, is further disrupting the industry. Broadcasters and OTT services are having to reconsider their business models with many diversifying to include ad-based revenue models. We’re also seeing an increased focus on tools and technologies that deliver operational efficiencies as well as much needed flexibility and agility, and this is leading more broadcasters to switch to cloud-based working”.
Ardava is quick to add that while the challenges currently facing the industry are complex, they are not unbeatable. “The broadcast industry just needs to carry on moving forward, adapting to deal with whatever challenges come its way.”
Michael Lantz, CEO of Accedo, also says the media industry has been under pressure for the last couple of years. “With a weak advertising market, a challenging consumer market, and a traditional broadcast industry which has been declining, many of our customers are reviewing their budgets in many areas,” he says.
Mathieu Planche, who is CEO at Witbe, reflects that the industry’s biggest challenge this year has been keeping pace with the rapid innovation cycles of streaming platforms.
“While this acceleration is great for consumers, it presents real complexities for video quality assurance. Platforms are constantly pushing new features, A/B testing interfaces, and updating apps across an ever-growing variety of devices—from smart TVs to set-top boxes to mobile. For QA and video operation teams, this means an explosion of combinations to test, making it harder than ever to ensure comprehensive, reliable coverage before the next update rolls out,” he says.
Planche also notes that manual testing “is no longer an option given the pace and complexity of streaming platforms”.
“As platforms evolve faster than ever, the industry is moving toward the next leap forward: combining proven automation with intelligent, adaptive technologies. By adding a layer of AI-driven intelligence, teams can achieve goal-oriented test planning, resilient UI handling, and issue triage, ensuring comprehensive coverage without slowing innovation,” he says.
The impact of AI
Ardava and Planche are not the only executives to mention the impact that artificial intelligence (AI) is having on the sector, meanwhile.
Julien Signes, SVP & GM video network at Synamedia, describes AI as both a challenge and an enabler reshaping the industry.
“We’re using it to accelerate our coding and product development while AI is also enhancing media workflows with features such as automatic multilingual subtitling and content highlights and helping in the evolution of viewing from long form to short form video,” he says.
Like Planche, Signes says one of the biggest challenges is balancing innovation with continuity. “Many customers rely on us for our longstanding, tried and tested video solutions while at the same time we’re deeply committed to pushing boundaries with new technologies like Senza or our Quortex SaaS solutions to help them lead into the future”.
Roland Sars, CEO of Media Distillery, notes that one of the biggest challenges the company has faced this year was adopting AI not just in its products, but also in its daily operations.
“As a company known for AI and machine learning-powered solutions, it might sound obvious for us to be ahead of the game here, but making AI useful across every team, from sales and marketing to finance and support, is a very different game. We didn’t want to experiment for the sake of it; we focused on embedding AI tools where they add real efficiency. That required a cultural shift, some trial and error, and a lot of internal curiosity. But it’s paying off: we’ve improved implementation times, boosted productivity across all teams, and freed up time for deeper, more strategic work,” Sars says.
He adds: “At the same time, we’ve also seen how critical it is to manage AI expectations externally. There’s a perception that AI is now a commodity, like water from a tap. With tools like Gemini and ChatGPT now mainstream, people expect that you can just plug in a large language model and instantly have a turnkey, scalable product. But real-world use cases, especially in video, are far more complex. Our customers rely on us for real-time metadata extraction from large amounts of video (thousands of hours per day). That’s not something you solve with an off-the-shelf LLM. It’s taken years of building a scalable platform and working closely with our customers to deliver both a solid platform that performs 24/7 in real-time, but also delivers accurate, actionable results at scale. So, while the AI hype is welcome, we’ve learned to stay grounded in what it takes to turn AI from buzzword to business-critical value.”
Cloud challenges
As already mentioned above, the switch to the cloud remains a work in progress. Jean-Christophe Perier, chief marketing officer at Globecast, notes that while cloud adoption is accelerating across the media and entertainment, key challenges remain, ranging from technical performance to cost control and workforce readiness.
“Latency is a major concern, especially in live broadcasting. In particular, latency management continues to be a key area of focus across the industry, requiring ongoing attention and innovation from service providers,” Perier says.
Another key issue, he adds, is “ensuring cloud providers fully understand the demands of mission-critical video workflows, where the performance expectations for live video are significantly higher than those for typical cloud applications”.
In addition, cost management is becoming more complex. “Rising total cost of ownership, data retention and egress charges has prompted some organisations to reassess their cloud strategies. In response, many are adopting hybrid or multi-cloud models to control costs, reduce vendor lock-in and improve flexibility,” Perier says.
Signes from Synamedia adds that although it may seem like the shift from satellite to cloud-based infrastructure is already done, “in reality it is very much an ongoing industry challenge. We’re helping customers make that transition as smoothly as possible by modernising workflows without disrupting core operations”.
Content control
A number of companies highlighted the difficulties in managing and monetising content. Peter Docherty, CTO and co-founder at ThinkAnalytics, notes that the industry is navigating a period of transformation, driven by shifting consumer behaviours, fragmented content ecosystems, and intensifying competition.
“With audiences overwhelmed by the volume of content, engagement is increasingly difficult. Plus, providers face mounting pressure to better monetise content and reduce churn while managing operational complexity. Even as linear broadcasting models give way to on-demand, personalised experiences, organisations struggle with siloed data, inefficient workflows, and underutilised metadata. These challenges are compounded by the need to deliver high-quality user experiences across a growing array of devices and platforms,” Docherty remarks.
Tom Dvorak, co-founder and chief commercial officer at XroadMedia, observes that over the last year, the media and entertainment industry has faced ongoing pressure to grow while managing tighter budgets and increasing competition.
“Consumer behaviours are transforming and the content universe is expanding rapidly, making it difficult for providers to know where to invest for maximum impact. This uncertainty has led to longer decision-making cycles for critical investments and innovations,” he says.
He adds: “While AI holds immense promise for personalisation, many providers are grappling with the challenge of scaling it efficiently and ethically. Real-time performance, data fragmentation, rising infrastructure costs, and the need to remain compliant with global privacy regulations all add layers of complexity.”
Paul Pastor, co-founder and chief business officer at Quickplay, says that as social media platforms redefine how audiences consume video, “many streamers face a fundamental challenge: staying relevant in an era of infinite scroll and instant engagement. Over the past year, short-form content has shifted from more experimental to essential. But it’s not just about matching TikTok’s or Instagram Reel’s pace; streamers need integrated short-form strategies that drive discovery as well as opening new monetisation paths for creators”.
At the same time, he adds, “flexibility of platforms has become a strategic priority. The industry has seen the cost of being locked into rigid, inflexible architectures – especially when speed and scale are becoming more critical. Streamers need the freedom to choose best-of-breed tools without having to fit into a one-size-fits-all architecture. Future winners will be those streaming platforms that can adapt quickly, personalise deeply, and think modularly about their topography because architecture matters”.
Stefan Lederer, co-founder and CEO at Bitmovin, says the economic realities of the past few years have guided video business decisions, influencing everything from OTT revenue models to technology adoption, with many video services turning to advertising to supplement subscription revenue.
“Yet, challenges around ad-insertion remain, such as delivering the right ads, at the right time and ensuring a seamless transition between content and ads,” Lederer says.
He points out that ad insertion was ranked as the top streaming challenge for the second year in a row in the latest Bitmovin Video Developer Report. “There’s undoubtedly enormous innovation potential around advertising, and luckily, challenge drives creativity. One such innovation is SGAI (server-guided ad insertion), which is a hybrid method for ad insertion that combines client-side and server-side ad insertion strengths.”
Estibaliz Rodero, regional strategy director at Evergent, reminds us that sports is a huge revenue driver for streaming companies, but warns that outdated monetisation strategies are holding many rights holders back.
“Fixed, rigid subscriptions are no longer fit for purpose — especially in sports, where audiences want flexibility, control, and unique value. Businesses are still finding ways to turn costly, bloated subscription packages into personalised, intuitive models: think pause-and-resume options, short-term access passes, and loyalty-led pricing that reflects real fan behaviour,” she says.
At the same time, Rodero notes, many pay-TV players are making “huge digital transformation steps, modernising legacy pricing and customer engagement models to launch differentiated, data-driven bundles at the pace of streaming-native competitors — all while slashing backend operational costs.”
“Operators are realising they can create much more flexible packages, drive higher value from partner services, and keep customers from churning with AI-driven behavioural analysis. The services that succeed won’t just be those with the rights deals, but those that make every customer interaction an opportunity to demonstrate added value — and build subscriber trust,” she says.
Tech challenges
Rodero further observes that vendor lock-in has also been a consistent challenge. “Many companies don’t even realise how they got stuck; others fear what it would take to leave. Migration, especially when dealing with millions of subscribers, sounds risky and painful. However, rigid platforms leave businesses with little flexibility to try bundles or ad tiers, slow launch cycles, and missed revenue opportunities. Standing still is often a far bigger risk than switching tech stacks,” she says.
Others have cited very specific technical issues that they have faced this year.
Paweł Hładkiewicz, CEO and CTO of Remotly, says one of his company’s biggest technical challenges was caused by the release of the Windows 24H2 update.
“This new Windows version introduced significant changes in power management. These modifications accidentally interfered with our power-saving mechanism, which we had developed to optimise GPU efficiency during ultra-low-latency video streaming in our remote desktop software Remotly. We treated this not only as a critical issue but also as an opportunity to rethink our approach. Over several weeks, our engineering team conducted in-depth analysis of the new OS behaviours. We reworked our strategies, and modified our own algorithms,” he says.
As a result, Hładkiewicz says, “we not only restored our original power-saving performance, we actually improved it”, adding that “this challenge showed that changes in the system environment can open the door to valuable solutions. With the right tools and teamwork, problems like this can lead to real improvements, not just quick fixes”.
Erik Otto, CEO at Mediaproxy, says a major ordeal this year has been keeping up with the rapid rate of change triggered by the ongoing adoption of SMPTE ST 2110 and streaming media in general.
“The constant need to adapt to this technological and operational shift is both time-consuming and expensive. We have seen networking requirements change very quickly from 25GbE to 100GbE, with the transmission speed for ethernet frame rates only set to rise further. The move to these standards and formats calls for substantial investment in new infrastructure, with broadcasters and media companies looking for greater system flexibility at lower prices,” he says.
To make this work successfully, Otto adds, “broadcast organisations and streaming platforms need to invest in innovative engineering while at the same time working within technical and standardisation constraints to deliver a quality output. This puts the onus on us as a developer of compliance and QC technology to provide systems that enable broadcasters to ensure their audiences receive the best quality video possible, which will – ultimately – differentiate them from the competition”.
Meanwhile, Ajey Anand, CEO of Norigin Media, says the management of “customised” UIUX, with limited budgets has been a difficult task.
“With the expansion of apps on all CTV platforms, the fight to standout has grown in the last year. Streaming TV has become more than just a commodity for the ones who launch smart TV apps, while many shy away from the fragmented platform and many app stores like Samsung Tizen, LG WebOS, AppleTV, Roku and AndroidTV,” he says.
Fighting piracy
Nik Forman, VP of marketing at Friend MTS, raises the issue of piracy, which he says has cemented its position over the past year as the biggest competitor to legitimate content service providers.
“Subscription fatigue, platform fragmentation and most critically cost have driven audiences toward illegal alternatives. At the same time, pirate services have become more advanced, offering vast catalogues of premium content at low price points while also leveraging AI to scale the theft and distribution of stolen content faster than ever before,” Forman says.
He notes that revenue security threats now span the entire content lifecycle. “Vulnerabilities begin at production — on-set leaks captured with personal devices — and extend through post-production, distribution, and delivery. CDN exploitation has grown in scale, with issues like token abuse and DRM manipulation allowing pirates to access and redistribute content while broadcasters foot the bill. Re-streaming, often using hijacked legitimate accounts, remains a primary source of illicit content. We’re also seeing a growing link between content piracy and other types of fraud and criminal activity which requires more investigating and intelligence resources.”
To address these challenges, he says, service providers “need an integrated anti-piracy strategy: robust DRM, watermarking, global monitoring, deep intelligence gathering, and targeted enforcement. Data is the backbone, driving smarter responses and enabling re-engagement with audiences drawn to pirate services, while collaboration across the entire content ecosystem is essential to meaningfully counter these evolving piracy threats”.
José Madrona, product manager, content delivery at Agile TV, agrees that one of the industry’s biggest challenges over the past twelve months has been delivering secure, high-quality video as piracy becomes more sophisticated and audiences demand flawless streaming.
“Live sports and premium content remain prime targets for illegal distribution, putting telcos and ISPs under growing pressure to protect their streams without compromising performance. At the same time, expectations around speed, reliability, and quality leave little room for error,” he says.
According to Madrona, there has been a shift in mindset over this period. “Performance and protection can no longer be tackled in isolation. Addressing one without the other only increases operational complexity and risk.”
He cites the need for partners to intelligently orchestrate traffic across CDNs, while embedding robust anti-piracy measures such as tokenisation, geo-blocking, watermarking, and dynamic policy enforcement, directly into the delivery layer.
“This kind of integrated approach is no longer optional. The cost of fragmented solutions, in both revenue and trust, is simply too high,” he says.
