Traditional video studios often support several fronts to acquire and keep paid subscribers for their streaming services while courting brands and advertisers to their offers given to advertising. Those who have paid television companies on cable and satellite should also consider investments in these media against the needs of their streaming video services. Studios are often faced with higher production and distribution costs, higher acquisition costs, more investment in advertising technologies and the need to grow and compete worldwide – not only with other streamers but also with social platforms and video game companies.
From this year’s media and entertainment prospects (M&E), the generative AI is located through almost everything, if not in full deployment, then at the heart of most strategies. For the big players – some of which have developed and marketed the most advanced AI systems in the world – the generative AI now amplifies their businesses, further expanding their competitive moats.3 Other M&E companies seek to see where generative AI could have an impact on their business, but there are emerging cases of use and increasing efficiency, efficiency and an affordability of generating AI which can make experimentation more attractive.4
The generative AI could both amplify and disrupt innovators and holders. This could make television, movies and game studios more efficient and productive while eroding their moat around premium content. This could allow creators and brands to produce more content and collaborate in targeted advertising, while flooding social platforms with synthetic media, non -human influencers, AI Sold, dangerous content and scams. On the edges, the new agile arrivals taking advantage of AI can further disturb the landscape.
In 2025, M&E should be animated by three key models.
- Advertisements, aggregators and new moat: Social platforms demonstrate the advantage of investing in technologies that can help strengthen engagement and advertising.
- Asymmetrical scale and competition: Traditional studios often live for attention and income with much larger competitors reaching and modeling billions of global users.
- Empowment IA: Although the generative AI can strengthen major studios, it can also erode their contents of content, allowing small creators and a possible rebalancing of the market.
Under these models, economic uncertainty increases.5 While 2025 takes place, the world seems volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous – or “vuca” – to rock military planners. M & E faces the volatility of demand, the cost of debt, income, technology and regulation. The rapid evolution of AI could intensify these challenges.
For some companies, attention is always the main currency. In our survey on digital media trends in 2025, we found that people in the United States have an average of six hours of entertainment time every day.6 This number should not increase and, for many, the quantity of discretionary expenses they have for entertainment do not develop either.7 What does this calculation look like on other global markets look like? And what are the levers of engagement and income in the new landscape?
In 2025, media and entertainment companies should understand how technology and scale came to dominate the market. They should consider what role they want to play in this new landscape.