The Media Odyssey

Evan Shapiro: [00:00:00] So again, we did not compare, we did not compare notes on our predictions in any way, shape, or form. And nor did we compare notes on the order that we would roll them out. So it's odd. Don't say too

Marion Ranchet: often because people are going to say, Oh, he's seeing it every time. It must not be true.

Evan Shapiro: I have, no, I think it actually is true.

Evan Shapiro: I think we are proving like you're coming at it from a French. And in Amsterdam point of view, and I'm coming at it from New York, but we both read the trends. We both spent a lot of time looking at the data.

Evan Shapiro: Welcome back to the Media Odyssey. That is Marianne Renschet.

Marion Ranchet: And this is Evan Shapiro.

Evan Shapiro: And this week on our third episode, our second predictions episode, we're going to go through five more predictions for 2025 each, right?

Marion Ranchet: Let's get started. [00:01:00]

Evan Shapiro: I'm going to start this time with something that I think is it's part of a larger prediction that I'm making, which I'll get back to later.

Evan Shapiro: But it is around brands as creators. So Chick fil A now has a programming channel on their app with family friendly fare. And I think it's doing pretty well for them for as much as they will talk about their results publicly. In the last episode, as part of our predictions around Netflix's innovation, I talked about Duolingo and a promotion that they did with Netflix on TikTok.

Evan Shapiro: So Duolingo, which is a brand that has actually really cultivated its creator profile over the last couple of years, on TikTok in particular with their Owl mascot. The Owl mascot appears in a music video that promotes Squid Game for Netflix. It's really cool, and I think it's part of an ad sales package that Netflix put together.

Evan Shapiro: So I thought that was really cool. McDonald's and their entire creator campaign, including with Kai Sennett. Eos did a deal with Charli D'Amelio for Hashtag Awesome Kiss. There, Nara [00:02:00] Smith and Marc Jacobs, there was a Four Seasons promotion with a baby. So there's been all this stuff where brands are actually going direct to consumers through collabs with creators.

Evan Shapiro: But I think you're also going to see a major trend. In the year ahead as with brands as creators themselves, really investing heavily in their tick tock. If it's still around tick tock channel, their Instagram channel, their YouTube channel other social platforms, their Facebook page, other social platforms so that they can build their own audience and not have to go through third party aggregators all the time, I think to a certain extent, the major hold co ad.

Evan Shapiro: Merger that's happening is in reaction to these trends. And so I think that's actually an indication that brands going directly to creators and audiences is a trend that's going to continue.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, I'm going to second this one. I hadn't thought of it, but at the end of the day, they have similar challenges as the one that we have, right?

Marion Ranchet: It's a question of attention, right? There's so many [00:03:00] options. There's so many things happening in a day. How do you make sure that your brand is making an impression? And I think it doesn't hurt to go on the side of creativity to do that.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah. Look not for nothing, but I make a decent living off of doing branded content as an influencer on LinkedIn for clients.

Evan Shapiro: This podcast, is open for sponsorship. So there is a real market out there for brands going directly to the consumers versus buying media off of platforms or media agencies.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, I'm gonna use actually this topic to make a quick segue. I think that's interesting, this trend that you mentioned because I was actually concerned.

Marion Ranchet: We've been seeing the first ai produced. Ads from Coca Cola, Sora came out a few weeks ago. That did not go

Evan Shapiro: well for Coca Cola. Yeah, that's true. That was a

Marion Ranchet: bad

Evan Shapiro: experience. But so

Marion Ranchet: that's interesting. You're going very much, I'm going to see it old school. But I think, it resonates and I think it's it's it's a way [00:04:00] for brands to have, real people make a real true impression.

Marion Ranchet: I don't really buy, ai on that side. But, so making the segue into one of the predictions of next year is, and it's actually a bit of a concern, is seeing everyone making, AI licensing deals. So I was at content London. Two weeks ago and you had amazing people on stage, huh?

Marion Ranchet: But they were speaking about the value of, an hour. And I think he gave the number of, was it 6. 5, dollar an hour? Yeah, I would need to look it up. I'll put it again in the show notes. To license content so that then it can be resold to companies to train, their AI, LLM models, et cetera.

Marion Ranchet: And he was alluding to the fact that the prices were going down. And so my prediction and concern is that everyone will want to do it to make a quick buck. And I see the appeal you can [00:05:00] have, it's a bit of a, one off flat fee. But then what happens next, right? You make one deal like that, when everyone does that's going to drive the prices down.

Marion Ranchet: And then ultimately, what have you gained, right? Because you have no skin in the game of what's being made afterwards, right? So you're feeding the engine to make it smart, but you don't get anything from the output. And I will make a comparison with the fact that when you sell your content, it's either you do flat fee or half share or a mix of both.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, flat fees are not great, right? Yes, it's giving you some money that you have the assurance you're going to get, but if your, piece of content is going, gangbusters

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, this is the mistake that the television ecosystem made, licensing all their best stuff to Netflix for, for these fees, which seemed really great and exorbitant, but was the beginning of the end for traditional television.

Evan Shapiro: They fed the Huns at the door. And let them beat them at their own game. Yeah, I think your, [00:06:00] so is your prediction that there's going to be a race to the bottom in these licensing deals for large language models and that the bottom is going to fall out? I think that's absolutely accurate.

Evan Shapiro: I'm going to use that to say to my own. AI prediction. I also have an AI prediction. It would not be a 2025 prediction. Yeah.

Marion Ranchet: We had to. We had to. I was like, I need to squash my head in front of one. If we didn't each have an AI prediction. But

Evan Shapiro: again, we did not compare notes on this. So it's very interesting.

Evan Shapiro: And we did not compare notes on order either. So I'm just choosing to go with my AI one next because I am actual intelligence. The original AI. My prediction is that you're right there and that the companies that actually find ways to integrate. Artificial intelligence, gen AI and AI into their operation correctly will be the ones to really transform.

Evan Shapiro: I think a lot of the big tech world will already be able to do this because they're building the AI themselves. And they're using this to improve their own companies. Amazon took their own [00:07:00] LLM and saved 4, 500 human years in reprogramming their infrastructure software. Regardless of how well it worked, it was designed by them, but then the implementation was handled by AI coders in coordination with human coders.

Evan Shapiro: So you look at that application to their processes, and then you look at Disney's inability to ingest ML BAM tech, right? The, most of the people that we know in big media still track their media rights on Excel.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: Let's all admit that to each other. It's really fucking embarrassing.

Evan Shapiro: So the companies that find out that a knowledge workers, you and I are both knowledge workers now on the planet earth, which is a lot of people in the United States waste half of their time each week. Half of their time is spent looking for shit, moving shit around, sharing shit, reversioning shit, storing shit, relocating that shit that they just placed somewhere, but they can't find.

Evan Shapiro: Sound familiar? The companies who integrate. And then you look at how [00:08:00] AI will also enable the creators to catch up to the saggy Hollywood model, right? The creators can now level up their graphics and their sound and their editing because of AI. And so AI is going to be a monster movement in in 2025.

Evan Shapiro: I don't think it'll take place in stealing screenplay, screenwriters jobs. I don't think it will be in the new black. Gold of licensing your intellectual property to training models. I think it's going to be actually making your company more efficient at what the fuck they do, which was the whole intention of the.

Evan Shapiro: Technology in the first place.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah.

Evan Shapiro: Now, that's my prediction.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, no, I agree with that. Actually I've been speaking to a lot of folks and a lot of media and entertainment companies, they have it's how they go about it, but they have let's say streams or tech teams that are dedicated to AI, and, I work with Prisma, which is the French condenaste, and all of [00:09:00] these guys are looking at all of those tools cause there's so many, and trying to find what is actually solving a problem. What will actually augment, what they do. I would love I'm a solopreneur. I would love to be augmented somehow and be able to spend more time doing valuable stuff because to the point you were making before, yes, I'm doing all of those things.

Marion Ranchet: I'm losing a lot of time every week.

Evan Shapiro: And this is a moment in the podcast. I want to do a shout out to Atelier, who is a really good partner of ours and who actually sponsored my top 10 list on my newsletter and is a really great AI platform. I just want to thank them for their partnership over the last year.

Evan Shapiro: It's been really great working with them. Next prediction.

Marion Ranchet: Actually, it's still a bit related to AI in a way. I think it's going to be difficult to distinguish. What is AI produced, what is not, and I think this will actually be great for those who have, and I would say [00:10:00] like us and folks in our audience, who are making the effort to really create content on a regular basis.

Marion Ranchet: Do live event, all of those things. And I think everyone is going to be craving for even more life. So it's going to be even on YouTube. I think there's going to be a lot of AI done, videos. We've seen the same with podcasts. I want to use AI to augment myself, but I will be as, honest and, full of flaws as I can be.

Marion Ranchet: And I think that this will work for me, for you, for everyone, because ultimately it's going to build a connection. I don't buy the fact that, AI on its own can build a connection. I think live streaming anything that's live that's more, one to one, et cetera, is is gonna go big next year.

Marion Ranchet: Even bigger than it is today. And you've seen it this year. This was the year of sports.

Evan Shapiro: Because of AI is partially what you're saying. Is that, I

Marion Ranchet: think, yeah, I would say that, we've always loved sports. We've always craved, human connection. But I feel like, at a moment where we don't know exactly what [00:11:00] It's

Evan Shapiro: real and what's not real sports or it's will matter more as a result of that.

Evan Shapiro: So again, we did not compare, we did not compare notes on our predictions in any way, shape or form. And nor did we compare notes on the order that we would roll them out. So it's odd. Don't say too

Marion Ranchet: often because people are going to say, Oh, he's saying it every time. It must not be true.

Evan Shapiro: I know. I think it actually is true.

Evan Shapiro: I think we are proving like you're coming at it from a French. And in Amsterdam point of view, and I'm coming from New York, but we both read the trends. We both spent a lot of time looking at the data. One of my big predictions is live, a move towards live, both in sports and in news, but also in, I think you'll see more live game shows, more live finales of game shows like the bachelor and the voice and mass singer and all that kind of stuff.

Evan Shapiro: And I think you're absolutely right and I think both in the Hollywood and professionally produced sphere on social media with those players as well, but increasingly for creators too, I think, Jake Paul proved that he can gather [00:12:00] a hundred million people. He probably have done that on you, on his YouTube channel and gotten just as many people, if not more.

Evan Shapiro: And I think you're absolutely right. There's another component to that, which I've touched upon earlier, so I'm not going to dwell on it, which is. Most of the major programmers are moving money out of entertainment and into sports into news and sports, but really into sports as the biggest bet.

Evan Shapiro: But even here in the U. S., the Grammys were just stolen away from CBS in a bidding war. NBC just tripled down on the Hollywood, I'm sorry, on the Macy's Day Thanksgiving Day parade as a live event. And I think, yes, I'm yes ending to death. Your prediction, but I think across the ecosystem creator to corporate.

Evan Shapiro: You're going to see live be really important next year.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah. And at a time where it's difficult to discover content because there's so much actually live it's appointment TV, right? You just, it's going to happen. You come in also what's great about live and from a technology standpoint you can build [00:13:00] engagement, bring interactivity.

Marion Ranchet: You mentioned, briefly shoppable TV. There's a lot that can be done, around that and you don't manufacture. Yeah. That relationship

Evan Shapiro: With your audience. We work with we work with WNET, who's the, one of the largest PBS affiliates, and we work with them on a show called Nature, and we've worked with them to premiere episodes of the show live on YouTube, and then follow that with a live conversation with folks from the film.

Evan Shapiro: That's worked out incredibly well, not just from an audience building standpoint, but also from a conversion standpoint. With regards to getting people to sign up for a newsletter. So you're absolutely right. I live to me is one of the key components that we took for granted when we all moved to streaming and it was there the whole time, but it was mostly something kids did on Twitch.

Evan Shapiro: Now, I think it's going to be sports, in particular, is going to wind up being the major driver of it. All right. Next prediction.

Marion Ranchet: So next prediction it ties into the recipe for success in free streaming and particularly in fast. [00:14:00] And it ties back into live because I think that next year we'll see I would say less channels, less platforms, it's going to scale down and what's going to work and what's going to thrive is channels who have exclusive content, premium content live content sports and more.

Marion Ranchet: It's really gonna, make or break a lot of channels and especially I would say those who mostly have content that they license from others, right? So a big a big shift a big shift next year on, on, on that front, it's fast is growing up and it resembles TV more and more, but yeah, bigger brands, live sports, news, exclusive, et cetera, et cetera, things that stand out when there's so much up for grabs.

Evan Shapiro: I know. And so my next prediction actually leans into that in a different way. It is about advertising and it is about standing out while others are just watching. And in particular, it's a big movement I think is going to take place [00:15:00] over the next five years. And that is ads in games. It's a little bit different than what you were talking about, but it's a great way for, I think, especially in live gaming.

Evan Shapiro: You look at games like Fortnite, right? Or Minecraft or Roblox these are massive platforms and that have hundreds of millions of monthly active users. In fact, if you take the top four live and mobile games they get three times the monthly active users of the top four fast platforms.

Evan Shapiro: So take the top four fast platforms, combine all their monthly users together, and the top four live and mobile games, and the live and games get. 3X the monthly average users. Now, think about all the impressions that are not being captured in Fortnite and PUBG and some of these others. Now, mobile is a massive ad market mobile is the largest segment of gaming revenue on the planet and advertising within mobile is the largest segment on mobile.

Evan Shapiro: But that there is also in game purchases like you were talking about earlier with [00:16:00] regards to fast, the ability to actually transact in these games when there is currency present. V bucks in Fortnite and R bucks in Roblox. Roblox just hired someone to work in the ad game. They're leaning into programmatic.

Evan Shapiro: The CEO of EA said that advertising in their franchise games, like what used to be FIFA and is now FC, and is played live more than anything else. The, these are new opportunities for them. So I think you're going to see an explosion in gaming ads over the next five years. I think it starts in earnest in 2025.

Marion Ranchet: Okay. I again, I will second that. At Content London, you had the transmedia manager from Ubisoft and he was talking about Assassin's Creed and the fact that he was looking at how they could integrate ads. It was quite funny. He was saying, because it's an historical game, how do you make sure that, it doesn't, it's not, just I think you

Evan Shapiro: have to be very innovative.

Evan Shapiro: You have to be really in the [00:17:00] formats and honestly, I think that is going to be a great challenge when people say, I'm, I just lost my job in television. And they work in advertising. The first place I point them towards is gaming. I don't see how they're going to be able to do what they need to do in advertising and gaming without people who have sold inventory before.

Evan Shapiro: And they don't have people who do that. So I think you're going to see a lot of opportunity there, but I also think you're going to see a tremendous amount of revenue moved into that. The other thing to remember is that half of the gamers on the planet Earth are women. They're playing mobile games mostly, they're playing puzzle games mostly, but that ad inventory is incredible.

Evan Shapiro: And if you look at brands who specialize in that audience, I think they're going to wake up to this available inventory and start to utilize it better. All right. Last prediction, I think for the year for this episode and also of the entire 10. So I'm going to go first cause you went first last time and that's how I am.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, go for it.

Evan Shapiro: All right. So I've been [00:18:00] talking about this a lot over the last year. This should not come as a surprise to anybody who reads my stuff, but if you've never listened to me before hello, this is a topic I talk about a lot, the creator economy. This past November, I think will be looked back upon as the moment that the creator plat sphere.

Evan Shapiro: The Creator Sphere took over the center of cultural relevance on the planet Earth from big media and particularly from Hollywood and London and New York and Paris. Jake, you had the election in the United States basically decided by the Bro Sphere podcasting world and the Creator Sphere, certainly the creator platforms.

Evan Shapiro: And social media writ large had a substantially larger influence on the outcome of this election. And I would argue elections in France and UK and Germany than traditional media did. And I don't think that's gonna change. And if you look at the amount of money spent on traditional media in this election cycle, that's bonkers.

Evan Shapiro: Then a week later, or so, two [00:19:00] weeks later, Jake Paul breaks Netflix. They can't handle the traffic. 65 million homes, 110 million people, all concurrently watching this. Then a week later, Netflix licenses The Sidemen, a series that started by creators on YouTube as a second season for their platform. In addition, you look at these huge deals with Alex Cooper and the SmartList guys and Dax Shepard.

Evan Shapiro: If you look at the escalation in size of usage amongst people who create games in Roblox, if you look at the number of artists who aren't label signed, who are on Spotify, if you look at all of the data out there, first of all, if you look, read Doug Shapiro, no relation, his newsletter, he has a great article on this past week and it, it talks about the scale of growth Of the creator economy versus the big media over the last five years, big media has grown at around 5 percent creator [00:20:00] economy has grown at a Kager of 25%.

Evan Shapiro: That's not going to change. And in fact, big media, think about this big media hasn't declined really over the last five years. It's grown by 5%. This is what 5 percent growth feels like. We haven't started contracting yet and big media is going to continue doing that for the rest of the decade. This year creator economy stole the center of gravity in the global conversation from big media.

Evan Shapiro: Every year that comes forward, starting especially next year, they're going to steal more and more from the, of the economics to go along with the size of the audience that's already there. 50 percent of all advertising on the face of the earth is spent with Amazon, Google, and Meta, those three companies.

Evan Shapiro: This is going to empower them to take even greater share unless and until big media understands how to plug themselves in to the creator economy, and that's what the big struggle I think for big media is going to be next year as well. So that's my last prediction for the year. [00:21:00]

Marion Ranchet: Okay, so my last prediction, it's actually a good tie in with the next part where I think you'll be at CES, right?

Marion Ranchet: So we'll do a bit of a wrap up of CES. You'll be covering it from Vegas. I'll be doing this from my living room. Who's cooler? So my last prediction is about CTV. I think next year is going to be rough. When you look at 2024, I did not expect to see a new stakeholder, a new entrant in that space.

Marion Ranchet: And I have written a long piece again on my newsletter about a trade desk. You'll see what I think about that. Let's not dwell into this, but I think it's going to get ugly. It's going to get ugly next year,

Evan Shapiro: And There's a battle between the O. S. s in connected television, that's what we're talking about.

Evan Shapiro: Yeah, with

Marion Ranchet: each other, yeah, we've been talking about the streaming wars I think this is, we've known for a few years already, this is the next thing who's going to control the living room. You're seeing numbers being thrown at us, [00:22:00] who's number one, who's number two, except no one is using the same terms, are we talking homes, are we talking devices, active devices, accounts,

Evan Shapiro: monthly active users, yeah, exactly.

Marion Ranchet: So I think next year, if it stays as is, meaning no consolidation besides, Vizio going to Walmart and it will be interesting to see the impact of that deal, actually, on those who've been very reliant, especially in the U. S., on Walmart. Think Roku, think Google, Fire, etc. I think if there's no consolidation, I think it's going to be very hard because, again, everyone, you have more people.

Marion Ranchet: Fighting for pretty much the same amount of TVs being sold every year.

Evan Shapiro: But how and fewer now being sold than in the last couple years because of COVID. We all bought way more televisions way earlier in the cycle. So now actually there's a lag. But who buys, like I, who buys who? What's the consolidation?

Evan Shapiro: I think Roku could very conceptually or conceivably go, be sold. But I don't think it's another tvOS [00:23:00] that buys them. I don't think, let's, I don't think Samsung would be allowed necessarily, either by themselves or by regulators, to buy Roku. That's where Microsoft, to me, comes into play. And you could see them buying, but that's not consolidation necessarily.

Evan Shapiro: So I think you're right. I think. There's going to be this bloody battle over the OS starting next year. It's already in place. You also have Comcast with Zumo and and Google in the place. And obviously Amazon is big in there. Apple plays, around. Do they get bigger all of a sudden in the space?

Evan Shapiro: Could they be an acquirer? Maybe that's some form of, if it does, Roku, which is not something that I think either of us necessarily sees as a possibility because of the, frankly, of the differences of between the two companies writ large. But I just, that would be true consolidation and that would be a game changer.

Marion Ranchet: I predicted Apple by un gros and I was wrong. Listen, if it

Evan Shapiro: happens next year, I'm going to give you credit. Yeah. This, these were our first three episodes. We did a wrap up of 2024. We did predictions for these last two [00:24:00] episodes. I think it's going really well. How do you feel it's going?

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, I feel good. I hope the audience will will love it too.

Evan Shapiro: They do. They do. I can hear them applauding from home. But starting next week, we're going to have a little bit different format. We're going to talk about what happened this week in media on each week's episode. So every week starting next week.

Evan Shapiro: On the media odyssey, we will be recapping what happened over that week and talking about a big issue from media each week. So thanks for listening. Great to see you again, Marion.

Marion Ranchet: Yeah, same here.

Evan Shapiro: And we'll check you out next week.

Marion Ranchet: See you guys.