MIPCOM 2025 has deployed an important edition this year. More for quality than volume of business. It is true what Lucy Smith, director of the event at RX FRANCE, said at the closing conference. This was the first time that YOUTUBE played a leading role in Cannes, and the first Brand Storytelling Summit, to involve advertising brands into content development to afford productions. And this has been the first event where the ‘Vertical Series’ have boomed as a hot market issue. These have been the three pillars of this MIPCOM, generating sold-out conferences and fresh energy almost everywhere in Cannes.

Market traffic? On one side, most of MIPCOM attendees consulted by PRENSARIO felt that the market had lower attendance this year. So, many disagreed with the RX announcement of 10.600 delegates, 100 more than last year. Ten years ago, the announced participants used to be around 12.000 people. For some industry analysts, the volume this year would have been about 8,000 attendees, but already the same vs. 2024. A reduced market would be logical, considering the mergers and resizing of all the industries the last years, especially since the pandemic.

On the other (good) side, everybody was agreed about the new auspicious shape of the market: less people per company, but more density of buyers, various attendees who were back in Cannes after many years, and more visibility of new buyers, especially from fresh territories: Swaziland, Tanzania, Uruguay, Kazakhstan, Panamá, MENA, etc. Most of the 350 exhibitors commented from good to full agendas, and many new exhibiting companies were seen -they were 88, according to RX FRANCE.

So, for PRENSARIO it is not relevant to have X more or less people. If you replace 10 people from a same buying company, per 7 from three different firms, the outcome is better. Less attendees are not necessarily bad news. And not at all if the newcomers come from YOUTUBE, gaming, toy communities, digital in general. These segments were ancillary in the past, and they are core business now. For many people Tuesday had more attendees than Monday… variable perceptions. Mipcom had to evolve to the new times, and it is carrying out this successfully.

During the week, we’ve been telling practical strategies that many companies concrete successfully to surpass the challenges of the market: first ‘advertising shows’, new revenue-sharing models as ‘Prime Video Direct’, to scout social media creators, production hubs, the ‘studios’ model, etc. We’ve developed the boom of the ‘vertical’ product, that rapidly all the industry is adopting, producing originals or with the product on hand, scripted and unscripted, even in the non-central markets. And we told the ‘battle’ of YOUTUBE vs. TIKTOK, to define if main video consumption of the upcoming years, will be proactive in a TV set/computer, or just clicking the rolling system at the mobile devices.

Today, confirmed at MIPCOM, the hot topics of content industry are five: social media (YOUTUBE, TIKTOK, etc.), FAST & AVOD, bundling, shoppable TV and vertical series. In some territories, you have to add unscripted Live streaming channels, which even compete with free TV channels in massive awareness. Something now about vertical series? The challenge is not to repeat the SVOD bubble, with all the big companies launching own platforms. Today, Reelshort is the main platform where most popular product converges, the Netflix of the early SVOD years. Let’s see if the industry finds a good middle point among concentration vs. diversification.

Nicolás Smirnoff, Alberto Buitron y Francisco Ferreyra

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