Media industry 'failing' on digital distribution

According to Accenture's global media and entertainment high-performance study, as many as nine in 10 senior executives of media and entertainment companies admitted to not taking full advantage of customer data that could deliver customised content, leaving them ill-prepared to seize the revenue opportunities of today's digital technologies.

The study gathered opinions from 130 senior industry executives across Europe, North America, South America and the Asia Pacific region in order to identify the characteristics that would be required of high-performing media and entertainment companies of the future.

According to Accenture, the study, which resonated strongly with the South African market, involved speaking to leaders and decision-makers in the media and entertainment industry, including television, gaming, film, music, publishing, portals and advertising.

When asked about the implications of social media for their business, more than half the executives (55%) indicated their companies had a clearly defined social networking strategy in place. Thirty-eight percent of the executives indicated they used social networking to gain customer intimacy while only 17% indicated that it was employed to gain sales.

The study also found that as many as 95% of the executives surveyed indicated that they did not have strong digital customer relationship management capabilities in place. And 58% of respondents said they were still in the early stages of developing such capabilities.

According to Accenture's study, fewer than 10% of the executives indicated that their companies had a fully integrated view of their digital consumers.

This suggested that the vast majority (91%) of industry players would have to consider altering their way of doing business in order to succeed in growing revenues in today's digital landscape.

The latest survey also noted that only 57% of the executives said their companies were making continued progress on the journey from analog to digital.

Only 43% of the executives surveyed said their companies had digitised more than half their properties. A year ago, similar Accenture research found that a third (33%) of the companies were transforming their businesses from analog to an integrated, file-based digital enterprise.

"Although some companies have made more progress toward achieving the goal of distributing content via any channel, in any format, to any device, most still need to form a holistic view of their digital consumer so they can monetise their content," said Fernando Usera, managing director of Accenture Southern Africa's communications and hi-tech practice, which houses telecommunications as well as media and entertainment.

"Revenue growth in this new, multi-platform world is dependent on delivering personalised, consumer-driven content to individual consumers via the right platform. This change in focus from the mass-market audience to an audience of one requires a complex shift from mass media to mass technology."