AI Is Changing Advertising in All the Ways

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Brands and agencies are excited about the potential of AI to bring mass personalization to advertising campaigns, but will need the assistance of experts to help them make the most of their data.

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“If you consider that large agencies, media companies and holding companies [own] a huge amount of proprietary data about markets, audiences and campaign history [it is] going to enable them to create very powerful AI models,” said Jamie Allan, director of business development, global agencies and advertising at chip maker NVIDIA.

After a year of pilots and tentative AI activity in the world of advertising, Allan said that in 2024 we will see agencies asking the question, “How do you connect the power of generative AI with the power of data?”

Speaking with Little Black Book, Allan said that 2024 is “the year of platform and production,” telling LBB’s Ben Conway that it’s “true table stakes” for every enterprise in the world.

“It needs to not be the product anymore,” said Allan. “AI isn’t ‘the thing’ — it’s how AI helps us create new things.”

WPP, Publicis, Dentsu, Omnicon and Media Monks are among agency groups investing in AI trained on centralized pools of data to build mass targeted ad strategies for the post-cookie era.

“The idea of personalization-at-scale, from content production, and using proprietary data to create privacy-first personalization that can bring an era of a more attractive, dynamic one-to-one advertising,” Allan said. “Many years of research have shown that it can drive better brand engagement and growth, and improve return on ad spend.”

It is in NVIDIA’s interest to be talking about this since its chips are being sold into agency groups to supercharge the crunching of data.

“Understanding the data you’re using to create or fine tune AI models and processes is very important, so having your own proprietary data is inevitably a huge advantage,” he said.

“The quicker the business models can be adapted to the impact of AI, the more successful companies will be as well,” added Allan. “That’s something agencies have the opportunity to help guide brands on, once they become experts in that business transformation.”

He insisted that GenAI is not about the generation of content, but the generation of intelligence. “The quality of that intelligence is based on the data, the sources and the teams building those models and pipelines,” he said.

“If you are generating and owning data, then you should own the intelligence that that data is going to produce as well. And you should have the capability to generate that intelligence.”

Marla Kaplowitz, CEO of agency advocacy group 4As, recently stated, “GenAI is here to stay, leaving the advertising industry with a stark choice: adapt or become irrelevant.”

As 4As SVP of creative technologies and innovation Jeremy Lockhorn wrote in Fast Company, “agencies must embrace the opportunity to transform their revenue model.”

Next in Media talked with Cognitiv CEO Jeremy Fain about what ad industry execs really need to understand about the difference between LLMs, deep learning and Computer Vision.

According to Fain, deep learning is a powerful tool in performance advertising, allowing for more efficient and effective targeting of impressions.

“Transparency and customization are key factors in successful media buying, and deep learning can provide insights and analytics to support these efforts,” Fain says.

His company applies AI, in the form of deep learning applications and technologies, to predict consumer behavior and self-drive full-funnel marketing performance at scale.

“If you rely on third-party cookies to message your customers, you could be missing out an 80% of the people you want to reach,” Fain said.

AI will drive inefficiencies from the advertising process from the creative to analysis of campaign performance but the technologists says this won’t lead to a loss of jobs.

Allan said, “Jobs will be augmented and supercharged, especially in the creative side. The best in the industry are looking at these tools and setting out very flexible strategies about their creative pipelines — how they can integrate multiple tools and not be set in a single creative process.”

Fain said, “I think the roles will change but I don’t think that the number of people employed at agencies will necessarily materially change over the long term.

A recent Goldman Sachs study suggests that, in the next 10 years, most jobs will be complemented by AI, not substituted by it.

“If we let it, and get it right, we can use generative AI to tell more compelling stories, connect with audiences on a deeper level, and usher in a new era of advertising that is both effective and meaningful,” said Lockhorn.

 

GenAI Is Good for Artists, So What’s the Problem?

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OpenAI is voluble about its mission to deliver all the benefits of AI to humanity, but is non-committal at best on whether it should be paying creators for the work its machines are trained on.

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Quizzed on this, Peter Deng, OpenAI’s VP of consumer product and head of ChatGPT, told SXSW, “I believe that that artists need to be a part of that ecosystem, as much as possible. The exact mechanics I’m just not an expert in. But I also believe that if we can find a way to make that flywheel of creating art faster, I think we’ll have kind of really helped help the industry out a bit more.”

Generative AI then should be viewed as a definite plus to the creative community and they should all be thankful for it for speeding up their process, and quit moaning about being compensated.

Asked directly whether artists deserve compensation, Deng avoids a direct response.

“How would I feel if my art was used as inspiration [for an AI]? I don’t know,” he said. “I would have to ask more artists. I think that, in a sense every artists has been inspired by some artists that have come before them. And I wonder how much of that will just be accelerated by AI.”

Nothing to see here then, creative community. Move along.

Deng’s main message in the provocative hour long moderated debate was that AI and humanity are going to “co-evolve,” so get used to it.

“I actually believe AI fundamentally makes us more human,” Deng declared. “It’s a really powerful tool, it unlocks the ability for us to go deeper and explore some of the things that we’re wondering about,” he said.

“Fundamentally, our minds are curious and what AI does is lets us go deeper and ask those questions.”

In his example, someone learning about Shakespeare might struggle to get past the language or understand the play’s context. But they could boost their appreciation of the text by quizzing an AI.

In a similar way Deng imagines everyone having a personal AI that they could interact with for any number of reasons such as bouncing around ideas, problem solving or answering questions.

In this sense AI is an evolution of a printed encyclopedia, of Wikipedia or a internet search engine.

“We are shifting in our role from being the answers and the creators to more of the questioners and the curators,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s a bad thing. If you take a step back, what’s really interesting about AI is that it gives us this tool, this new primitive that we can start to build on top of.”

The calculators is another analogy. Instead of spending time doing arithmetic, we can now think about higher level mathematical problems. Instead of spending time recalling every single fact, we have Google or databases where knowledge resides allowing us to ask higher level questions.

“The level of skill that humanity has just keeps on getting pushed up and up and up with every sort of big technology. Since AI is such a foundational technology we’re going to be able to push our skill level up and up.”

Kids, he suggests, could use AI to program, learning how to code even before they learn how to write.

You can’t rely argue with this sort of vague and optimistic approach to AI. It’s Deng’s job, after all, to promote OpenAI’s development.

He goes on to talk about the how the mission of the company inspired him to join it from his previous role at Meta. He claims to want to help create “safe” artificial general intelligence, or AGI, which is the next level of the technology that OpenAI is working on. He wants to “distribute the benefits to all of humanity.”

Deng said, “I’ve never seen a technology in my lifetime that’s this powerful, that has this much promise. Just to be a part of something that’s going to be so beneficial to humanity if we get it right. And I just want to not mess it up.”

However, interviewer Josh Constine, the former editor at large of TechCrunch and now a venture partner at early stage VC firm Signal Fire, is no fool. He does ask the probing questions of Deng. Such as whether bias in training data sets are a concern and what is OpenAI going to do about it.

Deng essentially says it’s up to the user to decide, seemingly absolving OpenAI of responsibility

“My ideal is that that AI can take on the shape of the values of each individual that’s using it. I don’t think it should be prescriptive in any such way.”

Constine tries to get Deng to agree that giving AI a standard set of ethical values must be a good thing for all of mankind, not just an AI which is super intelligent but one which is “empathetic.”

Deng ducks the topic with more platitudes. “The beautiful part of humanity are different parts of the world have different cultures and different people have different values. So it’s not about my values that I want to instill, I would just hope that we’re able to find some way to take the world’s values and instill it.”

Later in the interview he gives this revised approach: “How do we find ways to instill the values that we have and [impart that] learning to AI so that AI can kind of be a part of our coevolution?”

Would Deng trust an AI to defend him were he theoretically in court?

“[If] I were ever to be falsely accused of a crime I would absolutely like to have AI as a part of my legal team. One hundred percent.” AI would act as a an assistant to the legal counsel “just listening to the testimony and in real-time, cross-checking the facts and the timelines, being able to look at all the case law and the precedent, and to suggest a question to a human attorney. I think there’s absolutely human judgment involved. But that level of sort of super power assistant is going to be really powerful.”

That said, Deng wouldn’t yet trust AI for everything. Just as one might use the autonomous functions of your car, it will take to build up trust in the machine. A key part of the evolution for Deng and OpenAI is real-world learning. OpenAI argue that the reason they release ChatGPT and other large language models into the world is to test and trial and adapt and improve them with constant iteration outside of a lab. Deng argues this makes the AI better for humans in the long run.

“I think that the path of how we get there, the repeated exposures and experiencing of it is a huge part of the coevolution. We’re not developing AI and keeping it in the lab. We’re trying to making it generally accessible to other people, so that people can try it out and can gain that literacy, and can get a feeling for what this technology can do for you.”

Literacy or education about how to use and work with AI and its potential threats, weaknesses and strengths is, he says, very important. He advocates education schemes that do this and says OpenAI and its investors at Microsoft are already paying for some of these programs.

One way to ensure AI remains a tool for mass use and mass literacy is to make it free. Deng commits to the idea that a version of OpenAI will always be free.

“There should be there should always be a free version. Absolutely. That’s part of our mission — to distribute the benefits to all of humanity. It just so happens that it costs a lot to serve right now.”

He says enterprise users are paying to use OpenAI tools at a price “commensurate with their use,” but some of that value is able to trickle down.

OpenAI wants to push the boundaries of the tech, “but also make sure that we’re developing it in a very safe way,” he claims. “And the way that we build product on the inside is very much a combination of multiple people with multiple different perspectives on what could be.”

Pushed on whether there is a threat from deepfakes and other AI generated information in this election year, Deng agrees that it is does matter. He points to OpenAI’s support of content credentialled initiatives like C2PA. But will this matter in the longer term? He is not so sure.

“In the future, I don’t know if people will care,” he said. “Walking down the street here in Austin, I’m not sure how much we care that a billboard ad was created using Photoshop or not. Or indeed what tools were used to create that content. I don’t know how people will care [about AI generated content] in future but I do know that if people will care, then it will be corrected for.”

In other words, let the market decide.

Having warmed his subject up with some easy lobs, Constine gets down to the meat of questioning. Where does Deng stand on how fast AI development from OpenAI and others should be? Should AI development be slowed in order for all its implications on society and industry — and regulatory guardrails — to catch up?

“I’m somewhere in the middle. With any new technology, there’s going to be really positive use cases and there’s some things that we need to really consider. My personal viewpoint is the way that we actually figure out what those challenges are and how we actually solve them is to release at a responsible rate in a way that gives society a chance to absorb and make sure we have the right safeguards in place.”

He adds, “I don’t think that AI will be safely developed in a lab by itself without access to the outside world. Companies are not going to be able to learn how people want to use it, where all the good is, and also what are all the areas that we need to be very cautious about [without release in the wild].”

Constine probes; If an AI makes a mistake, who is responsible? Should that AI model be changed or pulled back? Should the engineer be held liable? Should the company?

Deng reiterates that releasing product is the best way of seeing the good and the bad.

“AI will make mistakes, but it’s important that we release it so that the mistakes that are made are ones we’ve already baked in some of the mitigations [safety features]. That iterative deployment is my best bet of how we can kind of advance this technology safely.”

 

Sub-Saharan Africa: Overcoming systemic challenges

AV Magazine

Africa is projected to be the world’s second-fastest-growing economic region, with a growth rate of four per cent according to the IMF. Adrian Pennington highlights a huge and diverse region still recovering from the pandemic.

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In 2024, Africa is projected to be the world’s second-fastest-growing economic region, with a growth rate of four per cent, as per estimates provided by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This places Africa behind only Asia in terms of economic expansion.

In terms of pro AV however the vast region of the Sub-Sahara is a minnow, subsumed under the Europe dominated EMEA umbrella in AVIXA reports despite generating the strongest growth in EMEA, with a six per cent CAGR from 2020-2025, growing from $1.7 billion to $2.2 billion during that time.

Of that the vast majority is governed by just one market: South Africa. It’s not a stretch to say that AV in Sub-Sahara is centred on Cape Town and Johannesburg.

A positive view of the industry in South Africa is provided by Yassine Mannai, associate director of sales for MEA at Shure. Calling it “a vibrant and dynamic market” he points to factors such as increasing digitalisation, the need for effective communication and collaboration tools, advancements in display tech, and the growth of live events as drivers.

The Nambian government Cabinet Chamber located in a listed building in Windhoek has a sound reinforcement and visual display system specified by Gadgets Namibia Solutions and delivered through SAW Namibia. The brief included preserving the historic interior finishes. Kit includes Pixel Plus LED screens, Novastar LED controller, Sennheiser TeamConnect 2 ceiling microphones, Audac loudspeakers and a Taiden digital conference mic system. Video routing/switching is via Atlona with Q-SYS control.

Pandemic’s legacy
Most commentators though are more downbeat. The pandemic “had a disastrous impact on all economies in Southern Africa,” says Fred van der Merwe, CEO Karibu Africa Technology based in ‘Joburg’ and distributor of Utelogy. “The resilience of the economy to a great extent determined the rate of recovery and South Africa, with its shrinking economy, felt the impact very severely.”

The pro AV climate in South Africa is “marked by volatility” according to Aadil Matwadia, commercial audio specialist at Proaudio Africa, Powersoft’s local distributor. He says this is primarily influenced by factors such as exchange rate fluctuations and rolling blackouts that affect all industries.

Joppie Maritz, MD, Stage Audio Works Namibia is scathing. He calls the South African Government, including municipal structures and State Owned Enterprises (SOE) “riddled with fraud, corruption and wasteful expenditure, rendering most of these entities close to insolvency.

He reports that of the 257 municipalities in SA, 66 have been declared dysfunctional with 151 municipalities on the brink of collapse. Out of the 19 major SOEs that are expected to operate like businesses and generate profits, only one managed to receive a clean audit in 2023. Some R22 billion (EUR 1.07 billion) losses were attributed to wasteful expenditure and irregularities from the state between 2019-2024, according to BusinessTech.

“Historically, government spending triggered economic activity but because of the financial disaster in government this is no longer happening,” says Maritz.

“Decision processes have lengthened by two to three years with the focus on cheap rather than quality.”

Generally, he feels South Africa’s technology adoption is the same period behind the rest of the world “although the adoption and implementation of hybrid solutions has narrowed this gap.”

Tech innovators

The South African economy is a dichotomy where large multinational companies and blue-chip financial institutions are profitable and operate with a first-world mindset. In contrast, notes van der Merwe, there is a plethora of SMEs and micro-enterprises which struggle to maintain modern and efficient working environments and ‘make do’ with simple but perfunctory technological solutions.

That’s not to say there aren’t opportunities. “Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa are seeing massive economic growth driven by foreign investment, leading to opportunity for pro AV with both new and established entrants,” says Paul Fraser, managing director of Cape Town systems integrator, AVT.

South African companies in particular tend towards wanting to be technology innovators, he adds, but there are many other factors that affect the purchasing market, such as electricity supply and political uncertainty.

“It is key to hedge this risk by having a spread of services into multiple verticals,” Fraser advises. “There’s still risk in terms of in-country skills, difficulties with the importation of hardware, and the lack of local warranty or support. Hardware imported though unofficial channels would not have a local warranty. AVT ensures that we procure through official channels, as well as have a network of local service providers that are based in countries outside South Africa, who we support with our own engineering skills.”

Sectors that were particularly hard hit by Covid were the travel, hospitality and live entertainment markets. In contrast, reports van der Merwe, the corporate AV market in SA “maintained a reasonable level of activity while companies deployed work-from-home technologies. This brought about a shift in the mindset of both employers and employees who started to experience the power and flexibility of videoconferencing.”

Rupert Denoon, regional sales director for Crestron essays a similar trajectory. During the initial phase of the pandemic, he says, many organisations refrained from substantial investments in pro AV, as remote work became prevalent, leading to a surge in demand for home-based video and audio conferencing solutions.

However, the return to the office ushered in the era of hybrid working. “This shift prompted companies to adapt, investing in advanced video, audio, and collaborative solutions for their main meeting rooms,” he says. “Recognising the necessity of accommodating the new work dynamics, organisations sought to equip these spaces with cutting-edge technology.”

Van der Merwe reports that SA’s corporate market has been experiencing a spending boom over the past 18 months, driven mostly by the deployment of Microsoft Teams Room functionality and associated hardware.

Signals from the last financial quarter indicate that component shortage is having less of an impact on the availability of products. “As businesses now bring more employees back to the office environment, the demand for pro AV is experiencing a rapid and significant uptick,” says Denoon. “This trend marks just the beginning, with sub-Saharan Africa witnessing a surge in the adoption and integration of pro AV technologies.”

Crestron has an ‘experience space’ in Johannesburg with “meticulously recreated real-life scenarios for smart building displays, incorporating integrated meeting rooms, hot desks, training facilities...” explains Denoon.

Investing in education
Turning to the education sector, it’s not a surprise to learn that the pandemic drove adoption of hybrid technology. In South Africa it seems the majority of schools adopted Google’s offering and used Zoom as a UC platform. AVT has been working with Stellenbosch University to modernise its classroom environment to enable remote learning. “The University takes this project very seriously as a growth driver, and has significantly invested in the project both financially and in terms of time,” says Fraser.

In the tertiary education market van der Merwe observes two divergent approaches with some institutions deploying Zoom while the majority went the Microsoft route. Recently, some institutions have abandoned Zoom in favour of Microsoft. The deployment of hybrid teaching venues has continued rapidly here and is expected to continue well into 2025.

Denoon refers to “the remarkable adoption” of collaborative technologies in meeting spaces and classrooms. “Educational institutions in Sub-Sahara have embraced distance learning, leveraging the interconnectedness of classrooms across campuses through AV-over-IP. This strategic use of real estate ensures an enhanced collaborative learning experience, facilitated by the growing adoption of pro AV.”

Significant advancements
The most significant advancements are observed in UC, AV-over-IP, and wireless presentation and conferencing. The regions showing the biggest growth are South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and the DRC, Creston reports.

Post-Covid in the region, the events and hospitality sectors have endured “a very slow financial recovery” with an even slower technological recovery. Adds Denoon: “Due to the years of lost revenue, there’s been very little investment in new equipment as companies extract the maximum life out of existing hardware. However, the past twelve months has seen a recovery of the capex investment in this industry.”

Matwadia supports this highlighting a noticeable surge in business within the rental and installation market. “This uptick can be attributed to factors including the rebounding economy post-pandemic, increased investment in infrastructure projects, and the growing demand for digital communication solutions.

“Additionally, SA’s pro AV sector is witnessing significant growth in hospitality, retail, and corporate events, driven by the need for immersive and engaging customer experiences. Economic hubs like Gauteng and Western Cape attract a higher demand for pro AV services to support events, conferences, and corporate functions.”

South African provinces like Gauteng, Western Cape, and Limpopo are characterised by their economic significance, concentration of businesses, and vibrant event landscapes. Gauteng, home to Johannesburg and Pretoria, is the country’s economic powerhouse, attracting a diverse range of businesses and events.

Similarly, the Western Cape, with Cape Town as its centerpiece, boasts a thriving tourism industry and a bustling corporate sector. “Limpopo is known for its natural beauty and cultural heritage and sees significant activity in hospitality and tourism-related events,” says Matwadia adding that all these regions offer fertile ground for pro AV businesses to thrive.

Away from SA
Across other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the pro AV climate varies. For instance, Matwadia says the Botswana pro AV market appears to be relatively stable with consistent demand. AVT spies growth in other major cities, such as Lagos and Gabarone.

Shure’s Mannai delivers the following snapshots: Nigeria has a growing pro AV market, “driven by sectors such as banking, oil and gas, telecoms, and entertainment”. Kenya is a leading market for pro AV in East Africa “with a strong technology infrastructure and an emerging middle class”. Ghana has experienced “significant recent economic growth”, and in Tanzania the demand for digital signage, audio systems, and conferencing solutions has increased, as businesses and organisations modernise their infrastructure.

Popular tourist destinations like Zanzibar (Tanzania), Cape Town, and Victoria Falls (Zimbabwe/Zambia) “attract a significant amount of pro AV activity due to the hospitality and tourism industry,” he reports.

Green and smart
Despite issues around security and electricity, substantial efforts are being directed toward investments to transition organisations off the grid and promote environmentally sustainable practices. “SA and Kenya are investing in green projects such as solar farms and wind power installations,” says Mannai, requiring solutions for monitoring, data visualisation, and remote collaboration.

The focus on creating smart cities (ie. Lagos, Nairobi, and Cape Town) and lifestyle estates provides opportunities for security systems. “Pro AV becomes crucial in connecting homes, automating processes, and furnishing smart cities with essential amenities like signage systems, sports fields, entertainment facilities, restaurants, and fitness centres,” notes Denoon.

“I’ve realised that approaches effective in first-world countries regarding sales and technology may not always yield the same results locally,” he says. “Adapting and modifying certain elements in one’s approach can lead to remarkable outcomes.”

Pro AV needs to pivot
Another key lesson for those keen on doing business in the region is the importance of adaptability and innovation. “Businesses that have embraced digital transformation and leveraged pro AV to enhance their operations and customer experiences have seen positive outcomes, including increased revenue and market share,” shares Matwadia. “The ability to pivot quickly, identify emerging trends, and tailor solutions to meet evolving customer needs is crucial.”

The Fragmentation Situation: What Do Today’s Streaming Audiences Want?

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More evidence if it were needed that the video streaming model is shape-shifting under its own weight forcing players to adapt a much more sophisticated approach to market.

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In its analysis from November 2023, Omdia found the number of SVOD services per home has declined in a number of markets for the first time. Market analyst Antenna in its latest “State of Subscriptions” report also finds that subscriber growth among Premium SVODs slowed last year to 10%. Deloitte in its “2024 Digital Media Trends” report found more than a third of Americans no longer think subscription VOD is worth the price they are paying.

On average, Deloitte says, US households spend $61 per month on streaming services. That’s a 27% increase over last year’s average of $48 per month. And streaming services might want to think twice before increasing prices further, as nearly half (48%) of the people Deloitte spoke with said they would cancel their streaming service — even their favorite one — if prices went up by $5 per month or more.

“With 36% of Americans surveyed believing content on SVOD isn’t worth the money, providers shouldn’t assume that advertising, bundles, and contracts are enough to help their business,” said Deloitte.

Its survey data shows that US consumers are questioning the value of streaming media while also declaring their unwillingness to ever pay for social media.

“This is a generational shift,” the report stated. With some eldest millennials in their 40s, “it’s no longer merely ‘younger generations’ who are giving their time equally to TV and movies, social media and user-generated content, and immersive and social gaming.”

Cancellations are already a problem for the industry, notes Chris Morris, analyzing the Deloitte report at Fast Company. Deloitte reports that 40% of consumers have cancelled a streaming service in the past six months.

Antenna found that churn had tripled in the last four years, pressuring net additions and growth overall. It also identified a category of “Serial Churners” — individuals who have three or more cancellations of a premium SVOD service in the past two years. That segment now comprises nearly a quarter of users.

Antenna attributes the overall increase in churn to the surge in mergers and acquisitions among the major streamers since 2019. Almost half of Premium SVOD Subscriptions (excluding Netflix) are in their first year of tenure, it notes.Cr: Antenna

On the plus side, 10% of cancellations resubscribe the next month, and one in three are back by six months after cancelling.

Antenna concludes that if the previous stage of the streamer business model was focused on acquisition to amass scale, the next stage necessitates a shift to managing their subscribers.

“This will translate to much more sophisticated marketing and product strategies, new success KPIs, and a whole lot more reliance on data,” says Antenna, which of course can deliver all of this.

Part of the problem is that viewer’s time is being more and more fragmented away from TV, away from streaming TV and onto social media sites and video games.

As Deloitte put it in its report, “Streaming video at a crossroads: Redesign yesterday’s models or reinvent for tomorrow?,” consumer expectations of M&E may now be shaped more by social media, content creators, and video games than by TV and films. How people weigh the value of entertainment options appears to be changing shape as well.

“The biggest challenge for SVOD providers and studios may be that they are no longer addressing a mass culture, but rather a fragmented landscape of competing digital entertainment options,” Deloitte execs state. “Trying to rebuild pay TV business models around streaming services could help reduce SVOD churn and slow attrition in the near term, but the long game for success will likely involve reinventing the medium to be more personalized, more shoppable, and more social.”

Providers will also likely need to widen their scope beyond TV and films to reach modern audiences, it suggests, and make their IP work across social and video games.

“The industry has had 20 years to understand the size and shape of the streaming disruption. Now they should come together to work to build something truly contemporary.”

This would include partnering with social media creators and influencers to facilitate “discovery, hype, and trust,” and using generative AI to improve the quality of content creation. However, Deloitte warns that this could also “lead to a flood of cheap and novel content that further dissolves the boundaries between ‘real’ and synthetic, commodity and premium.”

Simultaneously, free video stacking is still on the rise. YouTube’s continued growth as the top video service provider in key markets, is charted by Omdia. Strong growth in other social video platforms and Free ad-supported television (FAST) services sees free as the major streaming strategy that all major SVOD services are leaning into.

Also in Europe, the legacy of public service broadcasting remains strong, with traditional free TV and broadcaster video on demand (BVOD) services in high demand.

“The allure of social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram Reels has reshaped how individuals consume video content,” says Omdia analyst Maria Rua Aguete. “The appetite for free content is ever-increasing and the major streamers are clearly leaning into this as a strategy. With engaging formats and vast user bases, social media services offer compelling alternatives to mainstream streaming services.”

 

Behind the Scenes: Silo

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Award-winning Cinematographer David Luther had to draw on all his experience to help create a convincing backdrop for this dystopian short-story adaption. 

The Silo from the AppleTV+ sci-fi series is an underground bunker built to protect (or keep prisoner) the survivors of some unexplained human-made catastrophe. With virtually every scene in the 10-hour series set within the Silo, the filmmakers’ chief task was to ‘sell’ the environment both with the scale of accommodating 10,000 citizens and the claustrophobia of a society trapped below ground.

“In Silo there’s never any hard sunlight or high contrast light so to create ambience and to shape the mood we mainly used lighting often by switching off lights built into the set,” says Cinematographer David Luther. “LED lights were built into every set and connected to a DMX board which gave us temp, colour and dimming control over the stages. We added some harder floor lights, some sodium lights, and when we do view outside via the internal windows we had an excuse to put in a sunbeam.”

Setting the scene

When composing the short story ‘Wool’ on which Silo is based, author Hugh Howey envisioned a future where humans live in a 350-year-old subterranean city that is 140 storeys below a deadly toxic surface.

The filmmakers, however, only had a set built over one floor with bluescreen extensions to work with. The staircase which is a central part of the Silo’s architecture was built over three floors and featured a bluescreen floor. This enabled the camera and directing teams to use previs created by VFX Supervisor Daniel Rauchwerger to look up or down the ‘Y’ axis and view a real-time CG image of the silo’s internal dimensions.

“We had an iPad on set to see what the virtual extension of the world would look like rather than just bluescreen,” Luther says. “That helped us create a feeling of vertigo and scale particularly when Juliette (the chief engineer turned sheriff played by Rebecca Ferguson) is hanging by her fingertips facing a vertiginous drop.”

They were shooting on ARRI Alexa Mini LF framed for 2:1 and a brand of anamorphic Caldwell lenses called Chameleon. Using anamorphic helped separate the characters from the background adding depth to each shot.

“The lenses offer a very soft look for wide angles but [Caldwell] don’t have a great range of longer focal lengths,” says Luther who shot the second block of episodes with Director David Semel picking up the work of DP Mark Patten and Director Morten Tyldum. “I found a small zoom that worked well with the Caldwells. It wasn’t great image quality but when you want to degrade the look of the show for TV and take off the sharp edges of digital it was ideal.”

He required that lens for scenes set in the central spiral stairwell, notably a race to the top in episode 5 in which citizens run up the stairs while Juliette is running down.

“We wanted to be able to run freely down with Rebecca in a fluid narrative so we used smaller RED Komodos carried by a grip on a gimbal with the camera operated remotely.”

Other options for filming action on the stairwell included a wire-cam and a crane with a telescopic arm. “You’re constantly having to use camera trickery to get scale,” Luther adds.

The art department painted sets different colours depending on the zone of the Silo in which a scene was set. The cinematographers also gave each level a different colour palette for viewers to subliminally decode where they are in the bunker. Generally speaking, lighter for levels near the surface and darker in the engine room deep below ground

The show was filmed in a former Muller yoghurt storage building in Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, retrofitted by show producer AMC Studios into a working film stage. It had enough space but contained some original pillars which necessitated occasional compromises.

A communal cafeteria set featured a giant ‘window’ which pipes in a video feed of the outside world to soothe the populace. To make use of dynamic light from the window into the set, the window was composed of a 100ft video wall.

“My favourite scenes are set here when Juliette and Lukas (Avi Nash) talk about the stars, curious about the world outside the silo and the soft light creates a mood where we can feel the chemistry between the actors. It’s romantic and in contrast to the more sombre scenes.”

Trade secrets

Luther was born in Munich and learned the trade from his father, the Slovak Cinematographer Igor Luther. Igor had worked with Volker Schlondorff and Andrzej Wajda in the 1970s and 80s on classics like The Tin Drum and Danton.

“It was a love-hate relationship,” Luther says of the four year period assisting his father. “He was a very precise person. When I was assisting him I had to be focussed on my work, not allowed to talk. Working with someone that close to you means there is not the protection you might have normally. So when you do something wrong the criticism was immediate.

“But he taught me many secrets - mostly when I was younger. At age 12 he gave me a camera and a light meter and Ansel Adams’ book about zone systems to learn about exposure. My dark room was in the cellar so I could develop my own photos. He gave these to me and said ‘here you go’. He chose the best tools and the best book and the rest I had to do myself. He encouraged independence, not hand holding.”

Having studied cinematography first at the prestigious FAMU school in Prague, then a further three years at the NFTS in London, Luther made a name in commercials working for Sony and Volkswagen before segueing into primetime TV drama. He operated all eight episodes of the Das Boot remake for Bavaria Films in 2018, lit and operated the pilot for BBC drama Motherfatherson starring Richard Gere, BBC’s Sherlock – The Final Problem, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, His Dark Materials, the Mazey Day episode in the latest series of Black Mirror, and won an ASC Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography for The White Queen.

He was speaking to IBC365 after returning from the set of Amazon fantasy The Wheel of Time in the South African desert.

“I love architecture and fine art. Mostly my inspiration is from painting but it can also be the shapes of interiors or a natural landscape. When you are younger you learn more by watching masters [of cinematography] about how they approach their art. Once you understand it a bit more the inspiration can come from anywhere. It is by combining different compositions and emotions and tones and colours into new combinations that you evolve.”

Silo season 1 left viewers with more questions than answers but a second series, halted last year during the strikes, is currently in production.

Don’t Treat AI Like Pandora’s Box, Warns Jaron Lanier

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If you believe Jaron Lanier, there’s no intelligence in our current AI but we should be scared nonetheless. The renowned computer scientist and virtual reality pioneer is a humanist and says he speaks his own mind even while on the Microsoft payroll.

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“The way I interpret it is there’s no AI there. There’s no entity. From my perspective, the right way to think about the LLMs like ChatGPT is, as a collaboration between people. You take in what a bunch of people have done and you combine it in a new way, which is very good at finding correlations. What comes out is a collaboration of those people that is in many ways more useful than previous collaborations.”

Lanier was speaking with Brian Greene as part of “The Big Ideas” series, supported in part by the John Templeton Foundation. He argued that treating AI as “intelligent” gives it an agency it technically does not have while absolving us of our own responsibility to manage it.

“There’s no AI, there’s just the people collaborating in this new way,” he reiterated. “When I think about it that way, I find it much easier to come up with useful applications that will really help society.”

He acknowledges that anthropomorphizing AI is natural when confronted with something we can’t quite comprehend.

At present, because we have large language models that seem to work in the same way that natural biological neurons do, we have assigned both machine and human to the same category. Erroneously in Lanier’s view.

“Perceiving an entity is a matter of faith. If you want to believe your plant is talking to you, you can you know. I’m not going to go and judge you. But this is similar to that like it.”

The risk of not treating AI as a human driven tool is that the dystopian fiction of Terminator will be a self-fulfilling prophesy.

“I have to really emphasize that it’s all about the people. It’s all about humans. And the right question is to assess could humans use this stuff in such a way to bring up about a species threatening calamity? And I think the clear answer is yes,” he says.

“Now, I should say that I think that’s also true of other technologies, and has been true for a while. The truth is that the better we get with technologies, the more responsible we have to be and the less we are beholden to fate,” he continues.

“The power to support a large population means the power to transform the Earth, which means the power to transform the climate, which means the responsibility to take charge for the climate when we didn’t before.

“And there’s no way out of that chain that [doesn’t] lead to greater responsibility.”

Ultimately, the way to prevent The Matrix from ever happening is to frame AI as human responsibility.

“The more we hypothesize that we’re creating aliens who will come and invade, the less we’re taking responsibility for our own stuff.”

Lanier adds, “There are plenty of individuals at Microsoft who wouldn’t accept everything I say. So this is just me. But at any rate, what I can say is that Microsoft and OpenAI and the broader community that does seriously work on guardrails to keep it from being terrible. That’s the reason why nothing terrible has happened so far in the first year and a half of AI.”

How XR and AI Can Deliver True Transmedia Storytelling

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Rachel Joy Victor aims to explore how AI can revolutionize storytelling in the digital age, particularly in terms of content creation efficiency.

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“Traditional formats will always have their place, but immersive storytelling offers unique opportunities for audience engagement,” she says. “We’re witnessing a shift towards interactive narratives and spatial experiences, where viewers have agency in shaping the story.”

Victor is a designer, strategist and worldbuilder, working with emergent technologies and mediums (XR, AI and Web3) to create cohesive narrative, brand, and product experiences. At NAB Show, she will be moderating a panel discussion, “Harnessing AI-Driven Storytelling For Efficiencies in Content Creation,” on Monday, April 15 at 4:00 PM in the Capitalize Zone Theater (W2149). The session, which includes Jean-Daniel LeRoy, co-founder and CEO at Playbook XR, Mod Tech Labs CEO Alex Porter, and Emmy-winning immersive director Michaela Ternasky Holland, will focus on generative video workflows and procedural content creation.

Victor draws on a diverse academic and business background with a focus on computational neuroscience and “Spatial Economics.” Her designs range from multiplatform narratives and immersive experiences to tools and platforms and spaces and cities for clients including Disney, HBO, Vans, Ford, Havas, Meow Wolf, Niantic, and more.

“I’ve always been passionate about understanding human behavior and how it interacts with technology,” she says. “Over the years, I’ve worked on various projects, from creative direction for events like the Dubai World Expo to consulting for major brands like Nike and Crocs. Now, as a co-founder fbrc.ai, my focus is on developing AI-enabled tools for content production.”

She says AI plays a crucial role in optimizing asset movement across different platforms and points to the work of ModTech, a company that utilizes machine learning to optimize assets, ensuring they’re in the right place, at the right time, and in the right format.

“Additionally, tools like Playbook XR facilitate cross-format creation by embedding behaviors into spatial design engines, allowing for seamless adaptation across various mediums,” she says.

“We’re developing a vocabulary for immersive storytelling, leaning into immersion while keeping entry barriers low. For example, this session also welcomes the insight of artist Mikaela Ternasky-Holland, who is pushing the boundaries of immersive storytelling, combining 2D and 3D elements to create captivating experiences.”

Spatial Economics is an increasingly important field which dovetails media with science and entails understanding how spatial factors influence decision-making. For Victor, this is about leveraging real-time spatial data to personalize experiences. “For example, using data from IoT devices at a theme park to guide visitors towards water stations based on their location and environmental conditions,” she says.

With the rise of XR headgear like Apple Vision Pro a new battleground is developing for advertising and data collection around the real estate and sensory signals of a wearer’s face, such as data collected from eye-tracking.

“XR devices offer unprecedented access to personal data, raising concerns about privacy and data ownership,” she says. “It’s crucial to establish robust data policies to protect individuals’ privacy while still enabling immersive experiences.”

A little further out and some commentators predict a merging of our own biology — our neural pathways — for controlling AI-driven computers and experiences.

“It’s a complex topic,” she agrees. “While there’s potential for incredible advancements in brain-computer interfaces, we are also still grappling with fundamental challenges, such as capturing and interpreting neural signals accurately. The portrayal of brain-computer interfaces in the public imagination is often oversimplified. It’s essential to approach these developments cautiously and prioritize ethical considerations.”

Night and the City: The Cinematography for “Criminal Record”

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Peter Capaldi and Cush Jumbo star as detectives drawn together by an anonymous phone call to right an old miscarriage of justice in Apple TV+’s Criminal Record.

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Written by BAFTA nominee Paul Rutman and directed by Jim Loach, the series touches on issues of race, institutional failure and the quest to find common ground in a polarized Britain.

“I loved the complexity of this narrative,” French DP Laurent Barès (Gangs of London) informed British Cinematographer. “It’s a real challenge to convey this to the audience without them feeling lost. Too many shows today are simplistic, obvious. Life isn’t like that. Criminal Record is a good reflection of the complexity of our lives.”

The Frenchman says he loves London and this helped him portray a different side to the city than tourist cliches.

“There’s a significant character in Criminal Record that irresistibly attracted me – London. A multicultural, immense city. I love London. I’ve been fortunate to spend several months there because of my profession.”

During research, Barès discovered the work of British photographer Ray Knox, whose color photos of London seemed close to the universe of Criminal Record.

“He captured a modest London, far from tourist spots. The light guides his graphic composition. I also [draw on] photos from each of our location scouts. It was important to choose locations that, in some way, offered a perspective on the city.”

For instance, a lengthy discussion between Hegarty (Capaldi) and DS Cardwell (Shaun Dooley), is set in a bar with large windows. “Behind them, you constantly feel the hustle and bustle of the street, adding an extra dimension to their conversation.“When DS Lenker (Jumbo) talks with a phone seller, Hasad (Sia Alipour), we moved his stand a meter onto the pavement. This way, for the two-shot, you can see the perspective of Kingsland Road.

A related challenge of Criminal Record was to realistically portray working-class neighborhoods.

“I dislike miserablism,” Barès says. “We strived to maintain a balance between reality and poetry. I drew inspiration from Don McCullin’s photos of Liverpool in the late 1960s — beautiful, realistic, moving, and respectful. The framing is slightly distanced enough to understand where we are but not so much as to ignore the drama of those who live there.”

He shot the show on the ARRI Alexa Mini LF equipped with Zeiss Supremes FF lenses, and, as any good DP will do, devised a visual grammar to fit the story.

“Filming an investigation is capturing a thought in motion,” he says. “In every investigation, there is progress, mistakes, setbacks, dead-ends, and successes — all of which evoke camera movements. The approach shouldn’t be illustrative but attentive.”

He says he didn’t want a didactic approach to camera such as opening a scene with a wide and a forward tracking shot, then shot/reverse-shot during dialogue, and a few inserts for editing convenience.

“When you do that, it feels like you’re not telling a story but shopping for the edit. It’s not creative; it’s purely technical. Paul Rutman’s text deserved much better. It alternates action and investigation scenes with their consequences on the characters’ daily lives. There was no way to film them the same way.”

There is camera movement in introspective scenes — such as slow tracking shots accompanying the characters’ contemplation. This helps create an intimacy between the viewer and the characters.

“Filming this show required a lot of sensitivity. There’s no replicable model. Each actor, each scene is different.”

Barès follows the French filmmaking tradition in declaring a hatred for aesthetics for the sake of aesthetics. “Framing, composition only exist if they tell the story,” he declares. “This doesn’t exclude elegance and beauty, but there must be an alignment. Each project dictates its own aesthetics.

“I keep an eye on the second units. I don’t want a Terry Gilliam shot in the middle of a Michael Mann film, or vice versa. Each in its own style. What matters is the coherence from the first to the last shot.”

This consistency of image across the story applies to his work in the grade too. In this case, the colorist is Anthony Daniel (All Quiet on the Western Front).

He talks about his work on this project and approach to colorist collaboration in general during the Frame & Reference podcast, hosted by Kenny McMillan.

“Memories from the shoot help me explain what I want,” he said. “Weather conditions, the sun’s position and so on. I always remind my colorist of the shooting conditions. I don’t understand why sometimes DoPs are asked to work on grading remotely via video from their homes. Physical presence seems indispensable [to create the best work]. Thanks to my producers for respecting that.”

In the podcast, Barès discusses his experience attending a prestigious film school in France, highlights the challenges of entering the industry, including the need to learn and expresses frustration with film students’ lack of attention to storytelling and photography.