2024 Rankings of Most Important Commercial Trends in Global Media Technology Sector

This is the first of a series of articles that discuss select findings from Devoncroft’s 2024 Big Broadcast Survey (BBS), the largest annual global study of media technology industry trends, technology purchasing plans, and benchmarking of technology vendor brands.

Measuring the Most Important Trends in the Global Media Technology Sector

Devoncroft Partners’ annual global study of the media industry – the Big Broadcast Survey (BBS) – has been conducted for the past 16 years, making it the longest-running and most comprehensive study of the media and broadcast industry. During the 2024 calendar year, we were fortunate to again benefit from the candid opinions of several thousand media technology professionals in 100+ countries.

Large, representative samples are the only way to reliably track and predict technology adoption in the global media industry and we very much appreciate the time and effort that respondents devote to the BBS each year. We read all feedback from BBS respondents. Your comments are used to evolve the survey.

For those parties interested in a more detail review of the data gathered in the 2024, multiple reports for immediate delivery.

How Trends are Selected for Inclusion in the 2024 BBS Global Trend Index

Since its origination, the objective of the BBS has been to measure the market developments most relevant to business and technology decision makers in the global media sector. Each year, before releasing the survey, we spend a considerable amount of time seeking feedback on all aspects of the survey.

As part of this process, the composition of the BBS Global Trend Index is reviewed each year in conjunction with Devoncroft clients, media technology end-users, and a variety of domain experts. New trends are added to the BBS Global Trend Index when BBS stakeholders believe that the value of this additional trend information outweighs the resulting distortion of the year-over-year comparisons.

A deliberately conservative strategy is used when considering adjustments to the index. By keeping changes to a minimum, we allow for a more straightforward comparison of how trends were ranked versus previous iterations of the survey.

Based on discussions with clients, end-users, and experts during the planning stages of the 2024 BBS, we made a few targeted changes to the list of trends presented to respondents. ‘Outsourced operations (playout, transmission etc)’ was removed. ‘Targeted / Programmatic advertising’ was simplified to track the broader category of ‘Ad Tech.’ All other trends were maintained, though some slight wording changes were made for presentation purposes such as the change ‘Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning’ to ‘AI / Machine Learning / GenAI.’

The primary benefit of maintaining a consistent list is the straightforward year-over-year comparison with the 2023 BBS Global Trend Index.

The 2024 BBS Global Trend Index

The 2024 BBS Global Trend Index is a ranking of the media industry trends that are considered by BBS respondents the most commercially important in the current environment.

For the 2024 edition, we presented BBS respondents with a list of 20 industry trends and asked them to select the one trend that is “most important” to their business, one trend that is “second most important” to their business, and the other trends (plural) they consider “also very important.”

We then apply a statistical weighting to these results, based on how research participants ranked the commercial importance of each trend.

Please note the goal of this question is to help clients gain insight into the business drivers behind the respondent’s answer. Therefore, respondents were asked to rank these trends in the context of the commercial importance to their business, rather than “industry buzz,” or “cool technology,” or marketing hype.

The 2024 BBS Global Trend Index is shown below.

When reviewing the data presented above, readers should note the following about the 2024 BBS Industry Global Trend Index:

It is a measure of what research participants say is commercially important to their businesses in the future, not what they are doing now, or where they are spending money today
The chart above is visualized as a weighted index, not as a measure of the number of people that said which trend was most important to them
It measures the responses of all technology purchasers (i.e. non-vendors) who participated in the 2024 BBS, regardless of company type, company size, geographic location, job title, etc. Thus, the responses of any demographic group such as a company type or geographic location may vary widely from the results presented in this report.

Analyzing the 2024 BBS Broadcast Industry Global Trend Index

‘IP Networking & Content Delivery’ was the top ranked trend by global media technology buyers and users in 2024. This is the fourth consecutive year ‘IP Networking & Content Delivery’ received top billing in the BBS Global Trend Index (and the fifth time in the past six years).

A listing of top ranked trends in the annual index since its first publication in 2009 is included below.

Across the past 15 iterations of the BBS Trend Index only two trends have occupied the top position. The total industry-wide business model disruption from the emergence of ‘Multi-Platform Content Delivery’ was the dominant trend in the global media industry beginning in the early 2010s. Covered in prior editions of the Big Broadcast Survey was the far-reaching impact of the disruption across the value chain of the media industry – many well upstream from distribution. So, while the most visible and appreciated disruption from ‘Multi-Platform Content Delivery’ took the form of new SVOD and AVOD offering and erosion of traditional television business models, the impact was just as notable in remaking upstream activities throughout the media supply chain.

‘IP Networking & Content Delivery’ shares an affinity to ‘Multi-Platform Content Delivery’ not just in the level of impact (it is considerable) but also the breadth of media activities effected by the associated value shift. The trend of ‘IP Networking & Content Delivery’ impacts all aspects of the media value chain.

We have argued in earlier posts the high ranking of the ranking of ‘IP Networking & Content Delivery’ along with associated feedback registered in the BBS reflects a massive value shift occurring in the global media sector. It is ongoing.

Given the tremendous excitement for ‘AI / Machine Learning / GenAI,’ it is unsurprising the trend received a high ranking in the 2024 BBS Global Trend Index. The #2 ranking is the same level as achieved in the 2023 Index, though the gap to the first trend has tightened meaningfully in the 2024 results. As recently as 2022, ‘Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning’ was much lower in the index, recording a ranking of #8.

Further analysis of the results of the 2024 Big Broadcast Survey will follow in subsequent posts.

The information in this article is based on select findings from the 2024 Big Broadcast Survey (BBS), a global study of media technology industry trends, technology purchasing plans, and benchmarking of technology vendor brands. Several thousand media professionals in 100+ countries took part in the 2024 BBS, making it the largest and most comprehensive market study ever conducted in the broadcast and media industry. The BBS is published annually by Devoncroft Partners.

Granular analysis of these results is available as part of various paid-for reports based on the 2024 BBS data set. For more information about this report, please contact Devoncroft Partners.

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