A COMMISSIONED STUDY CONDUCTED BY FORRESTER CONSULTING ON BEHALF OF AWS MARKETPLACE, JANUARY 2025 The State Of GenAI In Media And Entertainment: A Spotlight On Streaming Services Accelerating GenAI Adoption To Drive Better Workflows And Customer Engagement
Executive Summary In 2024, the streaming services landscape is — to put it bluntly — crowded. Proliferating niche streaming services, consolidating media fiefdoms, and intensified competition from adjacencies, such as social media and gaming, have continuously expanded the strategic threat landscape streamers face. The result? Each provider faces a two-front battle — an ongoing struggle to differentiate to retain their viewership and, simultaneously, to meet growth expectations. Generative AI (genAI) has been identified as a key tool to retain an edge in innovation, produce more content, and provide new experiences to customers. However, many are still grappling with the most fundamental question: how can they best leverage genAI? The path forward brings risk. Streaming leaders recognize they must refine genAI’s role in their organization and find immediate value opportunities through verticalization. Expanding their use of trusted third-party partners and increasing employee augmentation is identified by the most mature adopters as key to enabling stronger genAI implementation, improving business performance, and reducing risk. ABOUT FORRESTER CONSULTING Forrester provides independent and objective research-based consulting to help leaders deliver key outcomes. Fueled by our customer-obsessed research, Forrester’s seasoned consultants partner with leaders to execute their specific priorities using a unique engagement model that ensures lasting impact. For more information, visit forrester.com/consulting. © Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester®, Technographics®, Forrester Wave, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. E-61035 Project Team: Jason Daniels, Market Impact Consultant Lillie Sinprasong, Associate Market Impact Consultant Contributing Research: Forrester’s Technology Architecture & Delivery research group © FORRESTER RESEARCH, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 2 3
Key Findings Streaming services are ambitious with genAI but are still working through early production. While more mature in their usage of genAI than many others in M&E, they remain challenged with effective data governance, bias mitigation, sourcing skills, and targeting the right use cases at the start. The most mature have already embraced partners to operationalize their strategy and plan on expanding their relationship. Organizations are hitting functional and data pitfalls. As a category, streaming adopters lag slightly behind their cable and broadcast (C&B) peers in early production implementation of genAI but find themselves better prepared than C&B orgs in foundational data management. C&B organizations’ data concerns increase with genAI maturity, where higher maturity streamers see this number decrease and find themselves better prepared than anticipated. However, despite this slight maturity lead, data and legacy systems remain a top challenge and directly hold streaming services back from doing more with genAI. GenAI capabilities will transform streaming services. Streaming services seek genAI capabilities that integrate into the tools and systems they already use. Looking forward, leaders see genAI improving personalized recommendations and advice; software development and IT operations; and streamlined content production and support functions. Industry-specific capabilities will enable firms to capitalize on these use cases while enhancing content production, improving customer engagement, and reducing costs. “ ” There are challenges because the entire system is developing right now, and there is no common platform. We are really optimistic about the use of [genAI] but just slightly guarded about how we use this technology. — Associate director, strategy, streaming media, India 5 © FORRESTER RESEARCH, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 4
Streaming Services Are Cautiously Ambitious On The Promise Of GenAI In surveying 190 streaming service decision-makers, we found that genAI plays a crucial role in the future of streaming. Nearly three in four respondents said it is critical that their organization integrates genAI within their products and services in order to compete as well as automate manual processes and streamline operations. Streaming decisionmakers are striving to do more with less through genAI. Drivers Of GenAI Adoption Opportunity to accelerate content/media production Opportunity to improve viewer/customer experience Innovation Opportunity to reduce production costs Opportunity to accelerate business processes Ability to enter new markets 55% 55% 53% 47% 46% 38% 7 © FORRESTER RESEARCH, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 6 Base: 190 streaming services decision-makers Note: Showing top responses Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of AWS, September 2024
Streaming Services Are Still In Early Stages Of GenAI Adoption And Production Streaming services have considerable work to do before genAI is bringing consistent value back to the business. Indicators show that streamers feel they’re targeting the right use cases and have the right tech to do it. However, much work remains. While streaming services are increasingly adopting genAI, nearly half do not feel they have enough people resources to fully harness the potential of genAI — even the most mature of adopters. To overcome the multifaceted challenges that await continued genAI investment, successful M&E leaders acknowledge that they require help and strategic partnerships to continue. Functional And Data Barriers Hold Organizations Back While streaming leaders have been fast to implement genAI, now adopters of all maturities are proceeding with growing caution. Fundamentally, many are struggling with getting the stuff to work: 68% report poor genAI performance and output quality. Further complicating adoption and degrading performance, adopters are also grappling with many challenges, including those outlined below. Top GenAI Priorities (Showing “High priority” and “Critical priority”) Top GenAI Challenges When It Comes To Achieving Business Objectives Having our content production partners adopt genAI to accelerate their work 86% Streamlining content creation and curation with genAI Outdated, legacy systems Legal and compliance issues 82% Personalizing customer interactions and recommendations 81% 52% Poor data management 45% 45% 9 8 © FORRESTER RESEARCH, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Base: 190 streaming services decision-makers Note: Showing top responses Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of AWS, September 2024
Streaming Services Require Support To Transform With GenAI Despite setbacks, streaming services are still planning to expand how they use genAI. For example, 68% said they plan to extend their usage of genAI in media production, while half plan to expand the number of use cases for using genAI. To achieve this, adopters don’t plan on going alone. To achieve their next set of objectives, and expand the use cases they serve, adopters plan to expand their partnerships with trusted providers. Over the next two to three years, these partnerships are looking to apply genAI to the following: GenAI Stands To Accelerate Content Production And Boost CX Over the next two to three years, 81% of respondents said that they anticipate genAI having a substantial impact on improving content supply chains. Seventyeight percent (vs. 70% for cable and broadcast) said the same for accelerating content production time. “Where do you expect genAI capabilities to have the most impact on your organization over the next two to three years?” Personalized recommendations and advice: Providing customization to their viewers, further customizing information and recommendations like individualized EPGs, contextual search, and personalized highlight generation 58% Improved software development and IT operations: Accelerating software development while reducing IT overhead in areas like AI code generation and artificial intelligence for IT operations 57% Streamlined content production and support functions: Speeding up timeintensive support tasks like captioning, translation, as well as contributing to ideation through narrative and asset drafting 48% Expected Outcomes Due To GenAI Investments (Showing “Significant improvement” and “Transformational improvement”) More innovation 79% 65% Greater operational efficiency 73% Stronger risk mitigation/compliance 11 © FORRESTER RESEARCH, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 10 Base: 190 streaming services decision-makers Note: Showing top responses Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of AWS, September 2024
“ ” GenAI] is helping my comms team significantly at the content creation stage, from scripting to preproduction. The more I use it, the more my actual output gets better. — Associate director, strategy, streaming media, India There’s a plethora of use cases, internally and externally: accuracy of content and finding content but also the generation of content. How could we use our archive to generate new or summarize content? — VP IT, streaming media, UK While the current state of genAI adoption in streaming services is early and fraught with model performance and data challenges, adoption optimism remains. As they proceed with their planned expansions for using genAI, streaming services must weigh urgency with caution and pragmatism with innovation. This is a journey where trusted, third-party providers — especially those already integrated into organizational tooling — can guide the way to identify use cases aligned to the business. © FORRESTER RESEARCH, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 12 13
Key Recommendations Prioritize employee augmentation for immediate value. Outside of the predictable genAI priority of “do more with it,” “see business value” is the next objective for those with use cases already in production. The fastest way to accomplish this is practitioner augmentation — automating repetitive tasks. Today, only 38% of mature genAI adopters in streaming have even identified employee productivity as a key value opportunity. Adopting genAI capabilities that are already part of the tools you use — like creative suites — is critical to reduce the learning curve and improve output quality. While most know this in theory, an embrace of employee augmentation will be critical to generate sought business results. Fund legacy tech modernization initiatives. The biggest challenge streaming organizations of all maturities see today — outside of poor output quality — is legacy systems hindering their progress. While the details of what ‘legacy systems’ entail vary by organization, establishing a working group — with a budget and staff — to facilitate modernization efforts will ensure organizations can see returns based on their genAI investments. Prioritize trusted partners. For those just starting, use premade solutions. While the furthest along adopters are still working to fine-tune their own models, poor performance and skills shortages limit business impact. For many proprietary model adopters, it’s due to their partner approach they’ve gotten this far. As organizations are orienting to genAI business value — or just starting out — partner selection is critical. Focus partner selection on two fronts: 1) those who can help with legacy systems modernization and data efforts and 2) those who can bring premade vertical specific solutions to bear across generative modalities. Prioritize MSPs and strategic tech providers who can supplement your skills, abstract away the complexity of managing a genAI stack, and assure your ownership over your data. Adopt a federated strategy. Today, most M&E firms either follow a centralized model of genAI management or are running fully decentralized. Both of these approaches utilize a single team to be in charge of everything from adoption, to policy advisement, to technical development. While centrality allows for effective governance and decentralization allows teams to move fast, both introduce risk. Centrality limits adoption and decentralization reduces risk awareness. As modalities and tooling proliferate, this model must adapt. Federation with a central team reviewing for privacy, data security, policy adherence, and training efforts at the organization level and deferring development and adoption to the team level allows for faster integration into daily workflows. 15 © FORRESTER RESEARCH, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. © FORRESTER RESEARCH, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 14
Explore More Download the full study: “The State Of GenAI In Media And Entertainment” RELATED FORRESTER RESEARCH High-Performance IT: The Right Next Tech For You, Forrester Research, Inc., January 15, 2024 The Architect’s Guide To Generative AI, Forrester Research, Inc., January 11, 2024 GenAI For IT, Forrester Research, Inc., January 25, 2024 GenAI Productivity Gains For Employee- And Customer-Facing Teams, Forrester Research, Inc., June 13, 2024 CONTACT AWS MARKETPLACE Read now Methodology In this study, Forrester conducted an online survey with 190 streaming service respondents and three interviews with streaming services decision-makers to evaluate the state of media and entertainment organizations. Survey participants included streaming service technology and business decision-makers at the manager level and above. The study began in August 2024 and was completed in September 2024. Demographics REGION North America 38% APAC 31% EMEA 31% ANNUAL REVENUE (US$) >$5B 23% $1B to $4,999B 29% $500M to $999M 28% $100M to $499M 20% M&E SUBINDUSTRY Streaming media 100% 17 © FORRESTER RESEARCH, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 16 © FORRESTER RESEARCH, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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