Fuel audience growth using media supply chain innovation

The media and entertainment (M&E) industry faces growing consumer demand for rich content and a streamlined viewer experience. At the same time, efficient management of the media supply chain is crucial for seamless content creation, content acquisition, content delivery, and revenue generation. Managing media workflows can be costly and time consuming without purpose-built cloud solutions for today’s digital media landscape.

I recently led a webinar exploring how the media supply chain enables seamless content creation, acquisition, delivery, and revenue generation amid shrinking timelines and budgets. Brian LaKamp, EVP, Media Supply Chain at Paramount, and Fabric CEO Rob Delf, illustrated how Fabric empowered Paramount to unify title management, ensuring quality metadata. This post highlights key takeaways from the webinar, including an overview of real-world examples.

Cloud adoption trends transforming the M&E landscape

The M&E industry faces several challenges in cloud adoption, including data silos, legacy systems, and growing global distribution complexities. According to a Forrester commissioned study, 45 percent of M&E organizations lack key technology skill sets, leading to a focus on upskilling and knowledge sharing. The study also found that 34 percent of respondents face pipeline integration challenges due to reliance on a distributed workforce and vendor community.

Looking forward, M&E leaders have the opportunity to maximize their technology investments by adopting innovative cloud technologies. Personalized experiences will evolve from one-to-many to more intimate one-to-few or one-to-one engagements delivered at scale. Firms will increase cloud solution investments, with one in three users increasing current investment by over 10 percent next year. They will seek greater visibility into their supply chain as distribution outlets grow.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) will play a crucial role in delivering these personalized experiences at scale. By using these technologies, M&E organizations can automate processes, gain valuable insights, and create more engaging and tailored content for their audiences. This not only enhances the viewer experience but also helps drive revenue growth and improve operational efficiency.

Real-world examples

The webinar featured real-world examples of how customers successfully embraced cloud solutions to better manage their media supply chain.

Cameo Kids creates personalized videos with AI voice

Cameo Kids, a company in the family entertainment industry, sought to expand its customer base by offering personalized products featuring animated characters. Partnering with Veritone, a multi-award-winning AI voice platform, they created a product generating personalized holiday and inspirational messages in voices of beloved animated characters.

The AI-powered solution allowed Cameo Kids to create instantly personalized audio messages for a wide range of customers and seamlessly onboard IP partners. This enabled them to produce exclusive content and effectively manage and scale existing and new animated characters and voices. This innovative approach enabled Cameo Kids to tap into a new revenue stream and deliver a delightful, one-to-one fan experience at scale.

Madison Square Garden fuels archive search to unearth and optimize assets

Madison Square Garden (MSG) aimed to improve customer engagement and employee productivity by breaking down data silos and enhancing content visibility through metadata and indexing. They wanted to make their vast content library more accessible and relevant to their audiences.

MSG utilized Nomad Media’s content management platform, built on Amazon Web Services (AWS) technologies, to search their extensive catalog with millions of media assets spanning decades. The enhanced search capabilities allowed them to find desired footage quickly, reducing the process from months to days. This streamlined content discovery and creation process improved customer engagement and employee productivity.

Fabric empowers Paramount to unify title management and ensure high-quality metadata

Following a merger, Paramount faced the challenge of unifying multiple brands, title management systems, asset repositories, and supply chains across different regions. They partnered with Fabric, a company uniquely focused on title management, to build a centralized system that manages governance and ensures quality metadata for distribution.

Paramount aimed to create a “unified source of truth,” improve reporting and SLAs, and align with industry standards. They adopted a federated ownership model, treating metadata as an asset and categorizing it into tiers, such as foundational, basic, extended, and division-specific metadata.

To enable this transformation, Fabric developed the Fabric Task Manager, which allowed for strict governance while maintaining flexibility in managing records. The solution also included user roles and permissions, ticket prioritization, and notifications to streamline the process.

As a result of the partnership with Fabric, Paramount was able to implement a centralized title management system. Modernizing the supply chain resulted in a unified state enabling a high degree of consistent and quality content delivery across brands.

Conclusion

As the M&E industry continues to evolve, embracing cloud solutions is essential for managing the media supply chain effectively. By adopting specialized tools and services, M&E leaders can streamline workflows, improve content visibility, and deliver personalized experiences, at scale. The real-world examples discussed in this post demonstrate the transformative power of cloud solutions in enabling seamless content creation, acquisition, and delivery.

About AWS Marketplace and next steps

How can your organization find partners who help optimize and transform your media supply chain into a modern media supply chain operation? AWS Marketplace has solutions like Fabric, Veritone, and Nomad Media that unlock innovation and address the needs of M&E organizations across the globe.

AWS Marketplace is a curated digital catalog that makes it easy for customers to find, buy, deploy, and manage third-party software, services, and data. It offers quick, easy, and secure deployment, flexible consumption, contract models, and streamlined procurement and billing operations. Over 330,000 organizations, large and small, use AWS Marketplace monthly to accelerate digital transformation and improve efficiencies across their enterprises.

Research from Forrester estimates that it takes half the time to find, buy, and deploy solutions through AWS Marketplace compared to other channels.

Visit Media & Entertainment Solutions in AWS Marketplace to learn more about M&E cloud solutions available in AWS Marketplace.

To hear the Q&A or learn more about the case studies discussed in this post, view Fuel audience growth using media supply chain innovation.

About the author

Ian McPherson is the Head of Global Business Development for Media Supply Chain & Archive and Data Science & Analytics at AWS. In his current business development role, he helps customers and partners transform their businesses by migrating to the cloud. During his 9-year tenure at AWS, Ian has also led Industry Marketing and AWS Partner strategy for the M&E Industry.