Market turbulence set to define media industry in 2023

The DPP has published its annual predictions report, now in its seventh year. The report contains eight business focused predictions and explores themes that will dominate the media and broadcast agenda in the year ahead.

Enabled by DPP member company Zixi, the DPP 2023 Predictions were drawn up by 34 industry practitioners – people who shape and run all kinds of media businesses.

They overwhelmingly agreed that market turbulence will be what we remember most from 2023, even though executives will be focused on organisational effectiveness and responsiveness to market conditions.

“The prediction that ‘There will be market disruption and consolidation’, which had only been fifth in the 2022 predictions, suddenly rose to the top this year,” says DPP CEO Mark Harrison, the report author. “In the impact ranking of DPP Predictions it is unusual for one prediction to emerge much more strongly than the others, so the huge impact assigned to market disruption and consolidation is highly significant.”

​​Having developed a list of predictions, our group of experts ranked them in order of impact. After market disruption, they believe monetising content, efficiency, and automation will shape the next year. They said:

Media companies will diversify their content monetisation channels
Businesses will focus more on their core strengths – this was retained from 2022, a reflection of this year’s discussions of transformation, cost savings and organisational change

Automation-augmented operations will enable scale
As well as drawing up the eight predictions, the practitioners considered the overall Mood Music for the year ahead – a way of expressing the business context in which media companies believe they will be operating.

Conversations about Mood Music for this year were dominated by the themes of Economics and Execution – our practitioners placing emphasis on delivery and showing value to customers, while also controlling costs and maximising profitability, especially during a recession. The term Transformation was also introduced, but now used as an action, not simply as an aspiration. Actionable Insight and Adaptability were both themes that were carried over from 2022.

Zixi CEO Gordon Brooks, one of the participants in the discussion, commented, “The broadcasting industry is being defined by rapid change. Consolidation and difficult market conditions are dictating that, more than ever, companies need to do more with less. They also need to swiftly capture new monetization opportunities. In the DPP 2023 Predictions we hear about the challenges customers are talking about every day, and to which we collectively have to deliver.” BCS Bureau