Four top media analysts reveal their data-backed assessments of 2025, as well as their predictions for 2026 and beyond.
From unprecedentedly large consolidatory moves to the nebulous implications of YouTube and AI on the M&E industry, these experts scrutinise the factors behind the largest disruptions of 2025 and lay out the best strategies for media organisations to invest in the future.
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Innovation Awards: Investigating 2026’s Content Creation finalists
What does it take to win a technological innovation award in Content Creation? Fergal Ringrose, Chair of Judges for the IBC Innovation Awards, assesses the top three projects in the running – revealing the key characteristics of each of the most competitive submissions.
Branded entertainment: Money, freedom, and audiences unite
As traditional broadcasters battle decreasing budgets and attention spans, brands have come to the fore as collaborators in an increasingly lucrative and creatively fertile strand of the media business.
FRAMES: Automating the archive end-to-end
Despite the availability of hundreds of generative AI tools, pre-production environments are still struggling to find a semantic archive search solution that is technically feasible and effective in the real world. Enter FRAMES.
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IBC Accelerator: Scaling the future of immersive festival experiences
Stepping beyond the screen, this IBC Accelerator project has set out to meld immersive technology and audience interaction into an entirely new form of audience engagement.
Content Everywhere: From AI promise to commercial reality
If IBC2025 was defined by conversations about artificial intelligence’s transformative potential, the past 12 months have been about proving where it can deliver tangible business value. CE exhibitors now describe a market that has become more pragmatic.
