Large delinearization | Viuz
By 2030, the BBC will no longer be broadcast on TV or radio. At least that’s what the powerful broadcaster’s managing director Tim Davie suggested at the end of 2022. In a world of endless options, the future of media will be digital only: a good part of the uses are here, they will be more and more. The media should prepare for this future, rather than living it, it should transform itself into this goal.
The future of media
The future is actually already here: TV is under attack by paid and free streaming services and YouTube. According to Médiamétrie, 47% of households now subscribe to SvoD in 2022, a significant increase of more than 50% compared to 2019, just before covid. Admittedly, complementary uses (SVoD, video games, online videos, etc.) only account for an average of 20% of the time spent in front of the television screen, but 20% is already more, there is momentum. The linear TV audience is aging and will actually tend to decline over time.
The viewer has become a user who chooses to consume content when they want, from where they want, slowly, fully or excessively. Two ideas in Tim Davie’s vision are particularly interesting:
– The role of the brand is becoming more and more important: The offer is united under the ever more ambitious BBC banner.
– This delinearization should allow to grow and reach new users all over the world. It does not control recession.
This delinearization of television actually comes from afar. Extends the landing of a housewife under 50 years old. Marketing and advertising strategies are focused on multiple consumer categories and personas rather than long-established targets. It is no longer the standard profiles that often come across this or that media, but the fluid audience understood through the prism of behaviors and the possibility that these behaviors lead to other behaviors, especially consumption. As we have seen, this delinearization of television and media consumption is part of the delinearization of consumption.
Delinearization of consumption
The new way of shopping is very open. Take the example of the large French and European brand Fnac Darty: at least 47% of sales in Q3 2022 came from omnichannel travel. In the words of a marketing director recently interviewed by Le Monde: “Very few customers shop only in-store or only on the Internet. Many start online and end in-store, or by asking a salesperson for advice. More than 500 euros in need of support makes a purchase, then returns home to compare prices and complete the transaction online. The delinearization of consumption is actually much deeper. For a decade, the showroom has become a massive phenomenon. information and most of all taking photos – in most cases on another brand’s website, often on Amazon. According to a study by the exchange, 30% of French people engage in showrooming, a practice that is increasing year by year. .One store is no longer enough.The customer journey is no longer linear, but spans multiple paths, even across multiple touch points consists of n.
Under the influence of the digital, a deep trend is accelerating: the original, comfortable, comforting unity is being disrupted. At least in media consumption is the unit of time (no one watches the same thing at the same time, for the same amount of time). Primitive is the unity of the races. The formation of a plurality, to the detriment of one, corresponds, of course, to the fragmentation of behavior and what some call an archipelago. The delinearization we describe in this article is not only collective phenomena, but a more radical reality in the sense that under the influence of the digital and especially after covid it expresses something more individual and more existential.
Identity and Truth: Distortions
Allow us to take a qualitative leap in delinearization analysis. Indeed, we also seem to be witnessing a delinearization of identity and truth.
By definition, digital allows for a separation between real life and online life. Since the 2010s, with the emergence of mass social networks, a strong dynamic has begun in this field. Instagram allows you to present a distorted version of yourself to the rest of the world. Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube can provide alternative, or even very alternative, views of the facts and the world. Because they are shared en masse, they can be even more damaging. The damage is known: the rise of extremism, widespread belief in conspiracy theories.
A very recent (January 2023) study conducted by Ifop for the Jean Jaurès Foundation reveals a worrying development among young people (18-24 years). Science is in sharp decline among them: compared to 55% in 1972, only 33% of them think that “science does more good than harm to mankind.”
Appropriately: 69% (yes, 69%) of young people believe in at least one of the many alternative truths available on social media. These pseudoscientific theses include platysism, the pyramids of Egypt were built by aliens, Americans never went to the moon, medical fake news…
These theses are more likely to be believed because social media consumption is high, those who suspect us of being lied to about the shape of the Earth naturally over-represent themselves among the young people who are potentially most exposed to these theses online. Heavy users of online video services such as YouTube (21%), messaging apps such as Telegram (28%) or the search engine TikTok (29%). As Jean-Dubrulle put it so well in a study for the Jean Jaurés Foundation: “the separation of a significant part of the population by scientific consensus”.
This delinearization can be enhanced by the emergence of two major and very recent innovations: generative artificial intelligence and the metaverse.
Artificial intelligence: not only can Chat GPT be used for fake news and even greatly increase its production on an industrial scale, but above all because Chat GPT does not tell the truth. It is a very sophisticated artificial intelligence and it is completely artificial in that it statistically imitates the truth, but does not understand what it is saying and cannot verify the truth.
Metaverse, because its use, if not yet commonplace, at least promises to create a virtual parallel world. It is difficult to measure what sequence this parallel world will take, how important it will be in life. If we judge by the world of gaming, and especially if we think of a platform like Roblox, we understand its immersive and addictive power among the young population. A young teenager today can invest himself so intensely in developing a parallel life completely separated from his real and mundane everyday life. Avatars take center stage in this other life, and Roblox does everything to give them more depth each time. The December 2020 acquisition of startup Loom AI hints at what the future of the metaverse could look like as Loom AI specializes in creating next-generation avatars. From 2D photos, these personalized 3D avatars can be animated in real-time thanks to computer vision technology (real-time image analysis with artificial intelligence). Thus, they can be used in various gaming platforms, but also in messaging and collaboration applications such as Slack or WhatsApp. For Roblox CEO David Baszucki at the time of the acquisition “Loom.ai will accelerate making collective human experiences more impactful and personalized by adding world-class facial animation technology. This is part of Roblox’s efforts to introduce expressive emotional movements to avatars that will provide deeper connections for our community. »
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Photo by Ryan Stone on Unsplash
