Since we don’t have a crystal ball to predict the future with, we decided to go with insights from Michael Wolf, cofounder and CEO of technology and media consulting-firm Activate. In October, Wolf gave a presentation on the future of tech and media at the WSJDLive conference. Out of the nine areas covered in his presentation, we’ve picked three you should keep an eye on in 2016.
Americans spend more time on tech and media than work or sleep.
- During the next five years, the consumer tech and media industry will grow by over $500 billion.
- Grabbing your audiences attention is vital since more than half the waking day is spent on tech and media.
- Growth opportunities are found in online behavior: how many visits to websites and apps and for how long?
Messaging will blow past social networks as the dominant media activity.
- Fastest-growing online behavior within the social landscape over the past five years, passing social networking. The three most popular are: WhatsApp, FB Messenger, and WeChat.
- Messaging will add over one billion new users by 2018.
- Apps built on top of messaging enable users to solve broad problems; messaging becomes a hub for consuming content, playing games, and conducting transactions. Example: LINE
Predicting what tech and media players will do next means competing.
- Tech and Media worlds are evolving into an increasingly unified stack of original content, services, products, and channels.
- Major tech and media players will need to identify the layers they’re missing and will look to fill gaps with independent players.
- Companies that can’t buy their way into a layer will ‘overlay’ it.
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