In an ADMA conference session examining trends and predictions for the coming 12 months, Professor Scott Galloway explored big picture media trends, largely from an American viewpoint.

Looking back over the past 12 months he says the losers were: Movie Studios, Theatres and Traditional Creators.  The winners were: Sport, TikTok, Netflix and Generative AI.

In trends for the coming year, Galloway believes “the streaming laggards will bounce back,” but that we will see the first streaming service close down as unbundling and rebundling lead to consolidation in the streaming industry.

He predicts that Tiktok will compete with Spotify and come up with original music and programming.

Making observations about the TikTok business strategy, Galloway observed that TikTok has one channel not many, “but it knows you so well you don’t need channel choice.”

“Choice isn’t a good thing, consumers want more value not necessarily more choice. Passive consumers want that… most consumers are passive… they are happy that the AI told them want to eat and what to watch.”

TikTok gets more data about what you enjoy, because most of its videos are short and there are many actions a user can take in a short time, so it can calibrate using the many actions viewers take with each video.

Galloway says there has been “unbelievable revenue growth for the main companies, Amazon, Meta, Youtube and Alphabet.”

The difference between AI and traditional search is that Google puts the emphasis on you to make decisions about the search results. “AI won’t give you all results for you to make a decision, it tries to give you the top result in the best way,” Galloway says.

If a consumer doesn’t like the results they can refine them, but many people won’t. He thinks there will still be life for traditional search.

“The things that save you time are most valuable,” says Galloway. Amazon, Netflix, ChatGPT help you zero in on products or save time from watching ads. ChatGPT helps you save one third of your time in writing emails or reports. He believes consumers will find these time saving features useful

In the new instant AI environment, traditional media companies will still have a strong hand due to their content. “Traditional content platforms have some leverage, they will be in a position to licence or create other ad streams to get money from AI companies.”

More predictions for 2024 are:

• India is the new China, it will lead growth rate
• Meta’s new growth vehicle is Whatsapp, while Facebook will decline
• Swing countries such as Saudi Arabia and India will sit in the middle of the big powers and will be in a positive position while the others play off against each other
• Nigeria and Indonesia are set for growth

A big observation is that people don’t read emails as much anymore, but that text messages and Whatsapp messages will be able to get to them

One of the biggest threats, according to Galloway, is misinformation and the concentration of power. “This is a worthwhile fear… All platforms will see the mother of misinformation near the US election.”

“AI won’t take your job, someone who understand AI will take your job,” concluded Galloway.