Digital innovation drives demand for human experiences

The global entertainment and media (E&M) industry grew 5.3% in 2025, with total revenue from advertising, connectivity, and consumer spending reaching US$3.5 trillion, and it should rise another 4.6% in 2026. The industry remains on a firm growth trajectory. According to PwC’s Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2026–30, which charts growth in 12 segments across 53 territories (see Methodology for more information on the segments), the global E&M market will grow at a CAGR of 3.4% for the next five years, reaching $4.2 trillion in 2030. This expansion, unlocking $600 billion in new revenues in 2030, will be overwhelmingly driven by digital ecosystems across the E&M landscape. 

Players in the E&M ecosystem who want to capture their share of those new revenues—and then turn those revenues into profit—will have to act quickly. Innovation has forged change in the creative industries, and it will continue to do so. Increasingly powerful digital technologies centred on AI will disrupt and change the way E&M products and services are created, distributed, and monetised. These shifts will alter profit pools along the value chain, open the door for new business models, and transform consumer expectations.  

But AI won’t change what people expect and need from entertainment and media. No matter how digital and algorithmic the user experience becomes, at its root, E&M remains an industry built on human craft and human experiences. Expertise, judgement, creativity, nuance, emotions, needs, relationships: these fundamentally human attributes drive engagement, interest, and passion. Going forward, technology, and especially AI, will enable more effective and efficient means of connecting people to one another, and connecting marketers to consumers. The most rapidly growing of the big three E&M sectors—advertising—is geared towards reaching individuals wherever they experience and interact with content, and precisely when and where they choose to make purchasing decisions. 

Among the clear findings in our forecast: 

• Consumers in 2030 will want choice, low prices, and digital access—even if their willingness to pay for these things remains limited. 
• In a digital world, people will be increasingly attracted to real-world experiences that are immersive, emotional, contextual, and personal. 
• Advertisers will keep spending more to meet customers where they want to be. Advertising surpassed $1 trillion for the first time in 2025, and it will rise to $1.4 trillion in 2030.  
   

Sphere, a massive, immersive concert and media venue in Las Vegas, has proven to be a powerful attraction. In 2025, it reported revenues of $781 million, with programming including 4D screenings of The Wizard of Oz and Eagles concerts. Its parent company is now planning expansion elsewhere in the US and in Dubai. 

Small screens may dominate people’s personal and professional lives. But through 2030, we will continue to see growth in content experiences centred on one-time events and activities taking place in public, in real life, and in real time—at Sphere, Cosm, and other ‘shared reality’ venues. Live, immersive shared reality experiences are becoming increasingly valuable because they function as social currency: proof points that can be broadcast across social media to project status, taste, and cultural relevance to the younger consumers who place high values on these experiences.  

Several of the segments that will chart growth in the coming five years fall under the broad live-and-in-person umbrella. These include movie box office, live music, and the rapidly growing gambling segment, which centres around live sports and other events. Other areas that depend on in-person, out-of-home (OOH) experiences, like B2B trade shows and B2C OOH advertising, are making up a larger piece of the E&M pie as well.  

Of course, the audiences that can attend live music and sporting events are limited by venue capacity. Advertisers will pay a premium to reach the largest possible groups of people. And here the synergies between sports and streaming are evident. One of the few formats capable of delivering audiences at scale at a specific time is live sports. The 2026 World Cup in North America is likely to be among the longest shared reality experiences in history. Millions of people will attend in person; billions of people will stream, watch, or listen; and many others will gamble on the event.  

More marquee sporting events are taking place on streaming platforms. In the US, Amazon Prime Video has steadily expanded its live sports footprint since acquiring NFL rights. Netflix and Paramount+ also are hosting an increasing variety of live events, including UFC bouts and WWE wrestling. In France, a notable share of Ligue 1 matches are now delivered via the direct‑to‑consumer service Ligue 1+. The movement of live event viewing to online media may have much further to run, given the streamers’ deep pockets and desire to appeal to subscribers and advertisers alike. (Read more in PwC’s Sports Industry Outlook 2026.)  

The streamers’ challenge 

Sports are one piece of the puzzle for streamers as they look to the future. Total over-the-top (OTT) revenues—including consumer spending on video, advertising spending, and TV delivered only by traditional broadcasters—rose an impressive 13.9% in 2025 to $226.6 billion from $199 billion in 2024. But the pace of this growth will slow. In maturing streaming markets such as Australia, Spain, and South Korea, consumers are beginning to exhibit ‘subscription fatigue.’ The industry may be confronting the limits of consumers’ willingness to pay for multiple subscriptions. Through 2030, OTT revenues will grow at a CAGR of 6.1% to reach $304 billion. That represents $77.4 billion in new revenues over 2025. One notable trend is that as consumers resist paying for continually rising numbers of subscriptions, advertising will assume a more prominent role. OTT ads, now 19.4% of revenues, will grow at a 9.4% CAGR so that in 2030 they will represent 22.6% of revenues. 

The forces at work in the streaming economy will push greater consolidation and bigger bundles of content and services. In 2030, as streamers strive to drive higher per-user revenue growth and minimise churn, their offerings will look different than they do today. Big streaming platforms will strive to be the entertainment hub of the home, offering access to television, movies, video games, music, sports, social media, and user-generated content. In other words, they will offer bigger bundles of content. 

The opposing forces of platform centralisation and content decentralisation will continue to shape the media and entertainment industry, as they have since the birth of the World Wide Web.  

On the one hand, we expect growing concentration of advertising revenues among a handful of huge global players and more M&A megadeals as streamers seek scale. These companies, and the advertisers they sell to, want to aggregate the largest possible collections of users. Yet these platforms increasingly rely on the human spark of creativity among millions of creators, influencers, and streamers who are building their own audiences on platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and TikTok.  

Through 2030, audiences will increasingly discover content through feeds rather than schedules, creators rather than commissioners, and recommendation systems rather than editorial curation. As smartphones, platform tools, AI, and low-cost production reduce barriers to entry, livestreaming and short-form user-generated content (UGC) videos will shift media further away from centrally controlled distribution and towards a more democratised environment. China and India present interesting case studies in decentralisation in the OTT/streaming space. After a decade of rapid OTT expansion led by major domestic platforms like Youku, iQIYI, and Tencent Video, China’s competitive landscape is fragmenting, with smaller and more specialised services gaining traction, particularly short-form video ecosystems such as Douyin and Kuaishou. In India, competition is dominated by domestic platforms—notably JioHotstar and Sun NXT—focused on local language content, Bollywood catalogues, and cricket rights.  

Centralisation in new ecosystems 

Countervailing forces are pushing the E&M industry towards increasing centralisation and the creation of new bundles in several dimensions. Connectivity, including what people pay for internet access, is the largest of the three major E&M sectors (advertising, connectivity, and consumer spending). Thanks in part to the growth of social platforms and decentralised content creation, revenue growth in connectivity, the largest E&M sector, will slow through 2030. Annual global service revenue for providing internet access will increase steadily at a 2.3% CAGR from $1.3 trillion in 2025 to $1.5 trillion in 2030. Wider adoption and usage of fixed and mobile broadband will account for the bulk of this growth, as paid voice services are further commoditised by cheap or free IP-based alternatives and the prevalence of messaging apps. (PwC’s Global Telecom Outlook goes into more depth on how muted growth will influence business strategy.) Meanwhile, global traditional TV revenues fell 2.7% in 2025 to $360.5 billion and will continue to fall at a CAGR of –01.1% to $341.2 billion by 2030.  

In response, traditional TV and telecom operators are going back to the future. Bundling, the business concept that underlies the declining cable industry, now has renewed currency. Companies such as Sky, Comcast, Rogers, and Jio are combining pay TV, broadband, and third-party streaming subscriptions within single offers. Bundling can help operators reduce churn and retain relevance even as audiences continue to shift away from linear viewing. Distributors including Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and YouTube TV are offering bundled third-party streaming subscriptions. Increasingly sophisticated bundling and aggregation models, such as Disney+ offering bundled subscription plans with Hulu and Max, seek to embed streaming services more deeply into consumption habits.  

OTT’s encroachment into key content genres like live events has spurred the traditional media industry to move away from direct competition and into collaborative partnerships. In the UK, the BBC’s agreement in 2026 to produce YouTube-specific content under a partnership with the streaming giant reflected a recognition by traditional broadcasters that younger audiences are now more readily reached on third-party platforms than through their own video on demand (VOD) services. In France, TF1’s agreement with Netflix shows how incumbent broadcasters are using global streaming platforms to monetise content libraries—bringing the traditional partner a bigger audience reach while providing the global platform with high-quality local content.  

Consolidation and centralisation are also evident in the fastest-growing of the three major sectors: advertising. The global internet advertising market accelerated by 12.2% year-on-year in 2025 to reach $755.6 billion. Internet ad revenue will rise at an impressive 7.2% CAGR through 2030, when it will reach nearly $1.1 trillion. US-based tech companies will continue to enjoy a leading position, especially when China (which has its own players) is taken out of the equation. Google and Meta remain the driving forces behind global growth; they use AI to better manage, target, and customise campaigns based on improved understanding of consumers. In May 2026, to better position itself for changing trends, Publicis agreed to spend $2.2 billion to acquire LiveRamp, a major player in data, identity, and agentic media buying. Agency consolidation provides advertising buyers with more integrated planning, execution, and accountability across an increasingly platform-mediated advertising ecosystem.  

The world of internet advertising, the ultimate disruptor of the E&M ecosystem, is changing rapidly in several dimensions. Witness the rise of online retail ads at the expense of traditional paid search. More disruption is on the way as large language model (LLM)–powered conversational search gains share from traditional search. Brands need to rethink where and how they show up, whether their online visibility is paid (advertising) or earned (content optimisation, PR). 

A key distinction here is between paid search, where advertisers pay platforms like Google, Bing, and Baidu to serve their ads to relevant consumers, and retail search, where retail media ads are displayed on online marketplaces such as Amazon.com and Walmart.com, powered by first-party customer data. The latter aims to reach individuals at the point of purchase. A third concept to add to the mix is conversational search powered by AI tools such as Gemini and ChatGPT, which poses a long-term threat to the entire traditional paid search advertising business model. More broadly, the way brands make themselves visible is changing—it’s moving from search engine optimisation to generative engine optimisation, experiencing a shift in digital public relations strategy, and developing a greater reliance on influencers. Major players like Google, Meta, and Tencent are responding by embedding AI to great effect into their search and advertising models. 

As e-commerce, streaming, and social media have grown in scale and sophistication, they’ve also strengthened their ability to combine audience reach with richer first-party data and more measurable commercial outcomes. Although paid search overall will expand at a 6.1% CAGR to $402.7 billion in 2030, the traditional component will expand at a CAGR of just 3.8% to $214.5 billion. Meanwhile, retail paid search will rise at a far faster 9.3% CAGR to reach a total value of $188.2 billion in 2030, at which point it will account for 46.7% of global paid search advertising revenue. That compares with just 40.4% today.  

We will also see a continuing shift in the display advertising market. Amazon’s reported advertising revenue surpassed $50 billion in 2024 and rose to $68 billion in 2025. Other major retailers are actively growing their retail media business: Walmart’s retail media advertising revenue, for example, topped $4 billion in 2024 and rose to $6.4 billion in 2025.  

Streaming companies are working hard to drive advertising revenues as their subscription revenue growth slows. Going forward, digital advertising will be increasingly layered onto other platforms—with Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Spotify, and Netflix all successfully developing their advertising businesses. Netflix reported that its advertising revenue more than doubled in 2025, to over $1.5 billion. By 2030, video will account for 27% of global internet advertising revenue, up from around 19% in 2021.

AI is already having transformational impacts along the E&M content value chain, from production to recommendation, discovery, personalisation, presentation, and consumption, as well as in advertising. But the rationale for its adoption in the industry is evolving. Initially seen as an enabler of greater efficiency, AI is now being harnessed as a driver of value. Its strongest areas of impact? Boosting ad revenues, and interacting with the other trends we’ve highlighted, especially in enhancing shared reality experiences. 

Paradoxically, AI, which aims to take some of the human element out of decision-making, is enabling a greater possibility for connections in two important vectors: between brands and marketers, and between brands and individual consumers. Advertisers are increasingly favouring formats that offer greater measurability, more precise targeting, and closer links to commercial outcomes. Looking ahead, momentum will be driven by newer formats such as connected TV and shoppable video, which combine digital reach with stronger attribution and closer proximity to transactions.  

The ability to observe users’ behaviour directly, understand patterns of engagement, and connect exposure to outcomes is ever more central to monetisation. Companies with large logged-in user bases and strong direct customer relationships are better placed to refine targeting, improve recommendations, and demonstrate value to advertisers. Put another way, AI is another force favouring centralisation, because having large troves of proprietary audience data will become a key defensive moat as AI models become more ubiquitous.  

AI will influence countless ways of working in the E&M industry in 2030. Content creators such as musicians and filmmakers will use AI tools to develop narratives and polish their output. AI won’t stop people from going outdoors to see billboards and other signs. It will help marketers reach people with more dynamically timed content and offerings when they do see those signs. Platforms will deploy AI to understand their customers’ preferences more effectively. Ad agencies will shift away from charging clients for time and expenses to charging for the performance they can deliver via targeted campaigns.  

In each of these instances, while AI is an important tool—perhaps the most important tool—control remains firmly in the hands of the craft, experience, and delivery capabilities of the service providers.