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In Warning Sign for Hollywood, Younger Consumers Are Choosing Creator Content Over Premium TV and Movies: Social Platforms are Becoming a Dominant Force in Media and Entertainment.

www2.deloitte.com

2025 Digital Media Trends: Social platforms are becoming a dominant force in media and entertainment

People still want the TV and movie experience offered by traditional studios, but social platforms are becoming competitive for their entertainment time—and even more competitive for the business models that studios have relied on. Social video platforms offer a seemingly endless variety of free content, algorithmically optimized for engagement and advertising. They wield advanced ad tech and AI to match advertisers with global audiences, now drawing over half of US ad spending. As the largest among them move into the living room, will they be held to higher standards of quality?

At the same time, the streaming on-demand video (SVOD) revolution has fragmented pay TV audiences, imposed higher costs on studios now operating direct-to-consumer services, and delivered thinner margins for their efforts. It can be a tougher business, yet the premium video experience offered by streamers often sets the bar for quality storytelling, acting, and world-building. How can studios control costs, attract advertisers, and compete for attention? Are there stronger points of collaboration that can benefit both streamers looking to reach global audiences and social platforms that lack high-quality franchises?

This year’s Digital Media Trends lends data to the argument that video entertainment has been disrupted by social platforms, creators, user-generated content (UGC), and advanced modeling for content recommendations and advertising. Such platforms may be establishing the new center of gravity for media and entertainment, drawing more of the time people spend on entertainment and the money that brands spend to reach them.

Our survey of US consumers reveals that media and entertainment companies—including advertisers—are competing for an average of six hours of daily media and entertainment time per person (figure 1). And this number doesn’t seem to be growing.2 Not only is it unlikely that any one form of media will command all six hours, but each user likely has a different mix of SVOD, UGC, social, gaming, music, podcasts, and potentially other forms of digital media that make up these entertainment hours.

86 comments

  • Is it our complete lack of originality and obsessive wholesale rehashing and incessant rebooting and remaking of already existing movies that's to blame?

    No, it's the children who are out of touch.

  • Stop making junk, and start making good content, and we'll watch it. But, as it stands, Creators with zero budget are making better content that the studios with nearly unlimited budget.

  • Honestly most recent movies and tv shows look like scenarios were generated by AI or some barbie sweet happy life generator so there is nothing entertaining. Creators on the other side, I feel like they do the stuff without script, just making their raw videos without asking if they can put something in the video, it's entertaining because they make mistakes or have controversial opinions that you can't see in modern tv.

    I think people feel more connected because they feel something when watching person talking on the screen whatever they want to talk about instead of person reading from script.

    • Honestly most recent movies and tv shows look like scenarios were generated by AI or some barbie sweet happy life generator so there is nothing entertaining.

      A lot of slop has wide appeal. And let's not pretend soap operas and sitcoms and trope genre fiction don't routinely have wide appeal. The theory that AI can seamlessly replicate pulp fiction / scripted reality TV seems to have held up for the most part, because so much of this content is a canned and formulaic to begin with.

      What AIs lack, more than anything, is a face and personality that is distinct to the line of work. There is no real AI "House Style" that gets adhered to. I can pick up a dozen Brian Sanderson novels and get roughly the same experience. But if I ask a Chatbot to "write me a chapter of a Brian Sanderson novel", what I'm really going to get is a generic jumble of Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Marvel with a few Brian Sanderson tropes thrown in.

      I think people feel more connected because they feel something when watching person talking on the screen whatever they want to talk about instead of person reading from script.

      So much of the "spontaneous" content is still heavily scripted and acted on delivery. What makes professional acting impressive is the range - a single person embodying a wide range of personalities and mannerisms. I don't watch Gary Oldman or Daniel Day-Lewis because I'm looking for unpolished delivery.

      But the Auteur experience is what draws people in and makes certain works rise above their peer materials. AI has no real artistry. All it does is cut, copy, and paste from a grab bag of established popular materials, hoping it'll trigger enough nostalgia to be recognized as good.

      As styles and tastes shift, I have to wonder what AI is going to look like, given how rooted it is in the moment of instantiation. The long tail will drag, while younger and historically unburdened artists will be out experimenting.

  • I can testify on that.

    In the last two years, I've discovered VTubers and streamers in general.

    I've discovered Geega's tech talks, Deme's videogame playthroughs, Michi Mochievee's amazing (and shocking) IRL lore, VShojo group gaming sessions, Dokibird's third wheel viral video, Ironmouse's gremlin moments with Connor, Melody getting raided at the most inopportune times, Henya's Minecraft trolling exploits, Vedal and Camila's hopecore video, Neuro-sama's singing and otherwise general roasting comments on human VTubers, and wholesome gaming streamers like Beacon of Nick.

    Not to mention a number of woodworking youtubers teaching about, or otherwise making mistakes when building or restoring furniture.

    There's content for everyone, and traditional TV doesn't even come close.

    It's like stepping out of a boring office into Alice's Wonderland.

    The creativity is out there and it's a joy to see what can be without corporate meddling.

  • Over the years I always hear people in real life tell me how much they loved Parasite, Fight Club, Being John Malkovich, Harold and Maude, Everything Everywhere at Once. They never seem to be able to find movies they like. They never put much effort finding things they'd like

    They're all movies that are from indie filmmakers that managed to get mainstream recognition. Movies like O Brother Where Art Thou, There Will Be Blood, Pulp Fiction, etc. Auteur led movies making original movies. There are tens of thousands of movies being made with passion outside of just return on investment a year. Uncut Gems had some popularity some years ago.

    I can confidently say with certainty that at least a couple hundred a year are good to great. Almost none of them make more than like $5 million at the box office worldwide in their release year. Most barely get screens and even in AMCs they show to theaters of like 3 people

    Discovery issue but also even marketed with great trailers, people aren't going taking the risk of being disappointed. Either it goes viral or people aren't watching it. Japanese movies to non-Japanese people might as well just be anime adaptations and the latest Godzilla movie

    Korean movies was for a period just Old boy to people that googled and then just Parasite. Maybe the Wailing.

    Every other country in the US may as well not exist when it comes to movies. Like 1000 feature length movies a year from the US but the only ones people know are like 5 blockbusters a year where they may watch 2 and then when the Oscars come around they learn of a handful of indie movies and maybe try the best picture winner. That's it. Even a movie they like, they can't come up with the idea of seeing who directed or wrote it and see what else they've done. We can complain about studios all we want but time and time again we are shown that the general consumer including the whiners in here will not try to find what isn't already popular. Same with music, television, books, etc.

    Unless it has a cookie cutter easy to see the appeal hook, very few people will show up. Celebrities they think are attractive and action. Way more competition now though. I don't think romance movies are major anymore. Plenty of good content, you just don't know it and you don't take risks. That includes everyone complaining about Netflix. There's plenty on there and Amazon Prime. There's plenty that hits the AMC or other major chain. You just don't watch it. You're a part of the problem.

86 comments