Mipcom 2025 in Cannes, France, continues as the main event of the content calendar. This year are expected more than 11.000 attendees, including +3500 buyers. These are usual good figures for the market, even before the pandemic, so Mipcom is steady handling the evolution of content business.
What can be said about market trends? We have two sides to check. One, the traditional segments: distribution, production, finished programs, formats, free TV, even VOD platforms. Two, the emergent digital environments: YouTube,Tiktok,bundling,CTV, etc. The main problem is that the new developments are not still compensating the maturity of the current ones. Who is finding good ways to mix them, is generating good outcomes.
Good times for traditional business?
The good news is that, according to some industry analystsPrensario interviewed these months, a healthy moment for the content market couldemerge since this fall, especially in Europe, after 2-3 very hard post pandemic years. Most of the main streamers would have reached already black numbers, after the recent reductions, and will push their original productions again. The broadcasters, that were benefited by the cool down of the streamers, can’t stop themselves and must continue growing in content and digital ventures.
So, a good amount of new content should be requested, boosting both production and distribution. Learning from recent mistakes, all the big players begin to share windows, find production twists, look for the best business models per every product. Avoiding the bubble, we will see a more rational and effective market. ‘There are good reasons to imagine a market this way’, the analysts say.
Product trends, cross media 2025
A new strongtrend is the conversion of successful movies or series to entertainment formats. For instance, there is now a premium gameshow based on ‘The Squid Game’, Amazon MGMis based in James Bond for ‘Road to a Million’, Netflixhas developed a ‘Willy Wonka’ contest to ‘find the golden ticket’, BBCpromoted a ‘Bake off’ based on ‘Harry Potter’… the trend grows both in digital platforms and free TV.
Also, there is more boom about content based on real facts, even on the theaters. The ‘True Crime’ genre in particular, is on every spotlight.We have now ‘True Crime realities’, many following the ‘Clue’ table game format, about discovering the killer from suspicious participants in a small place. This was made by Channel 4 in UK, around a fictional murder, but then real police people followed clues to find the assassin. We have ‘Traitors’ from All3Media, as well.
Sports and music continue expanding to more genres. The big Talent Shows as ‘The Voice’ keep themselves as top requested for the prime time, from Europe to USA and Canada. But now we see new variations of very successful formats, as ‘The Road’ from Paramount, which is ‘Operation Triumph’ but on a road tour. We continue watching biopics, docuseries about famous music or sports personalities, and there are more developments of exotic sports, both for fiction or entertainment.
Tech trends: the new of the newest
Today, the main thing about tech &content, is to generate monetization in YouTube,the top video player of the world.We have YouTube’s initial icons for kids as ‘Baby Shark’, ‘Charlie bit my finger’, musicians a Ed Sheeran, songs as Luis Fonsi’s‘Despacito’, every famousYouTuber… a good strategy is to create a brand in YouTube, then a family of products, to consolidate a community of followers andlastly turn to cross media.
Second, there are four new tech pillars for content: all social media, with TouTube + Tiktok, Instagram, Twitch, etc;FAST, one of the best and easier ways to turn old catalogues productive; Bundling, which will capture a quarter of the SVOD market for 2029, according to OMDIA; and CTV/Shoppable TV, to turn the TV sets more intelligent including real time e-tailing of products watched during the contents. Samsung and LG, due to CTV, are reachingSky TVin set top boxes penetration (OMDIA).
Third, two recent twists: the GenerativeAI is surpassing traditional browsers because it identifies the original sources, reinforcing content generators vs. just replicators. And especially,Tiktok is gaining digital ad pie portions vs. YouTube, connoting that its system is preferred by the new audiences for the future.
And fourth, there are two newest trends in media: one, the vertical micro-series (with Reelshort as the big referent) that last one minute per episode and are thought especially for smart phones. And two, the live streaming channels, that emit just live programming per streaming, mainly talk and variety shows, gaining alreadymassive popularity in some territories, focused on young people with young hosts.
Present and future, mixed
So, with all of these, we can design the digital map for the upcoming years. With the initial premise of synergizing present and future, we see that the developments that get this goal, are successful: FAST channels, to move old catalogue on new platforms;Tiktok, as we stress in another report at this edition, is the new free TV for the digital times, because the user opens and sees contents that he/she orients but not decide, and others full new, too.
Also, the micro-series can be considered the new way of viewing fictions, because the new teens tend not to watch movies and even series, they prefer to keep themselves watching shorts in Tiktok and Instagram. The live streaming channels give what current advertisers wish: freshmedia, digital, with very segmented audiences they maybe measured precisely. These are the roads to follow undoubtedly.
Nicolás Smirnoff
