The Ascension project exists to explore how AI is reshaping marketing—from initial experimentation to full acceleration and eventual elevation; but more importantly it exists to offer marketers practical, tangible guidance on how they can evolve their organizations today to thrive in an AI-driven future.
One of the most important areas for marketing teams to understand and leverage right now is the ongoing evolution in how audiences consume and engage with entertainment experiences.
OMG research projects that at some point in 2025, global time spent on streaming will overtake that on linear broadcast, with time spent on gaming far outstripping either.
Along with the premium now placed on sports, and a renaissance in branded content – there’s never been a more important time to understand how to drive growth through entertainment experiences.
OMG’s ‘The Next Five Years’ projects how time spent with a range of channels will change over the next half-decade. For access to the report reach out to OMG.
Phil Rowley, OMG UK’s Head of Futures and Suneil Saraf, Head of planning at DRUM, recently authored a report into ‘The Future of Entertainment—In the Era of AI’ – offering a future-facing take on how AI will shape our entertainment experiences over the coming decade. As well as mapping AI’s impact on creators, distributors, and audiences, it outlines strategic considerations for marketing teams seeking to navigate this ongoing transformation.
The report defines four macro-forces of change that will influence the consumer experience, business model, and marketing opportunity of entertainment: how AI will democratize by leveling the playing field and raising both the floor and ceiling on content experiences, how AI will be a force for diffusion – driving the atomization of content by creating truly multichannel and multimodal experiences, how AI will dimensionalize by accelerating the ubiquity of gaming and immersive media, and how AI will dismantle – forging a new media landscape creating new geographical centers of gravity.
There’s a wealth of information and advice for marketers in the report:
- How AI will raise the floor on creativity for homegrown players and creators whilst also raising the ceiling for big entertainment companies and platforms.
- Why there will simply be more media, requiring a myriad of more and better recommendation engines and algorithms to sift, sort, and recommend our media to us, changing the way we encounter and discover content.
- That entertainment will come in more shapes and sizes, even more thinly sliced in its appeal.
- Why AI will support and accelerate the dimensionalising of media and add new forms of interactivity to our experiences; with a new visual grammar and new navigational protocols born from gaming.
- How AI will accelerate globalization giving voice to the previously silent and empowering a new generation of multinational multi-market makers and creators.
One of the key frameworks in Ascension – described in the project introduction – is a tiered approach to experimentation and scaling of AI projects: from making efficiency gains, to driving effectiveness, to new types of innovation and creativity. It’s the middle area of effectiveness where this new report can offer real illumination and inspiration:
How can AI work in tandem with creative and administrative processes to beef up existing marketing output? How can this output evolve from a multichannel to a multi-modal approach – with seamless adaptation of assets into new formats and platforms? How can the adoption of AI augment and empower your teams, partners, and customers? And above all – how can an understanding of the ways in which the creation, distribution, and consumption of entertainment experiences allow you to outthink, outpace, and outgrow your competition?
Authored by
Christopher Stephenson
