This is How IoT Will Dominate the Media Industry

The term 'IoT' was first coined in the year 1985 by Peter T. Lewis in a speech given at the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Though the concept didn't gain popularity back then, it has been gaining a lot of traction since last five years or so. IoT has now entered into a lot of industries and made our daily lives much easier than before. These industries include automative, healthcare, retail, transportation and transportation etc. One of the industries which came a little late to the party was the media and entertainment industry. But, they have now realised that IoT is both disruptive and inevitable and in order to survive in this competitive world and retain viewers/customers, they will have to embrace the technology.

Here are a few key areas where IoT is expected to make a huge difference for the media and entertainment industry:

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A recent report by global survey and accounting firm, Ernst & Young states that the usage of sensors within the Internet of Things devices such as phones, or wearables will be offering mankind with probably the biggest data unlocking potential. This extra data can be utilised by the advertisers to target their ads to specifically to their target audience. The report also mentions that the extra data can prove help the advertisers to understand when and where did one see their ad, how many times was the ad watched, and in what context all this made the ad successful.

Google’s much famous AdWords advertising platform works meticulously towards matching with the media as more and more consumers now want to consume their content in terms of context, engagement and sometimes even performance. Over the years, the way Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook has utilised its marketing skills and leveraged its social networking site's famous newsfeed to make it a top revenue generator for itself and the media companies is a commendable success story in itself. Almost all the top newspaper publishing houses in the world have now joined Facebook in order to provide direct content to their readers and decrease the loading time exponentially.

Big-data Journalism

For the uninitiated, data journalism involves a journalist analysing and filtering a large sea of data to arrive at news stories that are worth being told to the viewers. The core process of data journalism involves gathering, filtering and then visualising this data into news that will be relevant to the masses.

This type of journalism holds a wide variety of scope as far as story ideas are concerned because the only thing that matters here is news worthiness.

Lastly, data journalism is considered as the only type of journalism that is capable of moving into any sector. Every company is currently in need of people who have the skills to find relevant information and create valuable, relevant stories from them.

IoT Enabled Devices in the Warzone

If all goes according to the plan, we could soon see IoT enables devices becoming important companions of soldiers fighting it out in the warzone. As we have reported earlier, global tech giants Google and Amazon have already been testing their innovative drone technology for product delivery purposes. The defence forces of several countries including India have also recruited drones into their war equipment.

There's a strong possibility, that in the future we might see IoT enabled devices being used by journalists and media organisations to provide real-time news coverage from warzones and keep their staff safe at the same time.

Connected Smartphones with Internet of Things enabled sensors will soon have the potential of generating news through data and deliver news relevant to individuals based on their previous news consumption habits. A recent research has found that 39 of the top 50 news sites in the US get more traffic from mobile devices than from desktop PCs.

Wearable devices

Applications for wearable devices holds a huge potential for the media and entertainment industry. It can attract new subscription and advertising revenue for broadcasters, publishers, and entertainment firms. Hence, devising a suitable wearable media strategy has now become an important task for media organisations.

Challenges With Big-data

The biggest challenge that a media organisation has to face with big-data is smartly handling the massive amount of data that is available to them. The media companies depends on heavy IoT deployment to track and analyse this massive amount of data. Social media channels, embedded devices and sensors further expand the ability of gathering data from areas that were previously unexplored or considered difficult to explore. This calls for the creation of a sophisticated analytics.

A recent Accenture research has shown that finding top analytics talent to manage massive amounts of data is going to become a difficult task in the coming years. Hence, it is needed that the industry takes a stock of the situation and makes sure that such a situation does not arrive in the future.