What awaits us in 2017

Damage to the facts or the next big media trend. How can fake messages be prevented automatically? Chatbots and the field of "computational communication" will become massively more important. Automatically falsified news, whether by chatbots or as clickbait, is a major problem for media democracy.

Television ratings stumble into the digital world. The paradigm of the single currency put to the test of the new reality. In the non-linear moving image market, usage can no longer be fixed to an exact point in time or a short time interval. In addition, the ideal of a single currency must be replaced by a new paradigm of separate measurement of advertising and content.

Snapchat and Instagram are the new shooting stars among the video networks. Facebook is mutating into an adults-only service. Competition in the moving image market will continue to intensify. Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter and co. continue to battle for attention, but in the end, newcomer Snapchat could come out on top.

"O.K., I would like...": Amazon Echo and Google Home are conquering the home with voice control. Voice is becoming the new interface. We will see many new devices on the German market in 2017. The challenge is to create trust and design the digital interfaces with users in such a way that the digital assistants become established in the home.

Programmatic ads for online audio: Publishers, marketers and agencies in search of the right data strategy. Market participants will actively develop joint data and distribution strategies in 2017. The technical requirements for programmatic advertising in the online audio sector are in place. The pace will also depend on the discussion surrounding data protection.

Less is more: Why successful VoD providers are apparently providing less content. Since 2014, the offering on Netflix's US platform has shrunk by a third. Less obviously also means more in the VoD market. However, in-house productions are anything but "cheap". The right dosage remains an art and needs to be found.

Raising the throttle limit: Mobile use of audio streams is increasing even without zero-rating. The use of audio on the Internet is increasingly taking place via mobile devices outside of WLAN zones. With the introduction of flat rates for the use of selected music services, mobile operators are making inroads into the service sector again after many years.

Pay-VoD: Amazon raises prices and YouTube Red hopes to attract young viewers. YouTube Red, YouTube's pay VoD service, is coming to the German market in 2017 in order to attract young viewers in particular as paying customers. The German pay VoD market will continue to grow in 2017. Competitive pressure is increasing, especially for many small providers.

Influencer marketing is professionalizing. And with Musical.ly, the next generation of influencers is already at the start. Influencer marketing is gaining new momentum thanks to online marketplaces. The machinery surrounding this topic will become much more professional in 2017. And the platforms for influencers are also growing beyond YouTube and Snapchat.

Trends in the games market in 2017. 4K, VR and above all seamless: The boundaries in the video games market will continue to blur in 2017. As in the smartphone market, devices will continue to coexist. However, it is not just the boundaries between console generations that are becoming blurred: The transitions between mobile and stationary gaming and between reality and virtuality are also becoming more fluid.

E-sports - electronic sport is becoming a mass phenomenon. Competing in computer and video games is a leisure activity for many millennials around the world. The market is booming internationally and attracting new investors. Further commercialization requires professionalization - which has also begun in Germany.

Podcasts are emerging from their niche in 2017. Podcasts are being listened to more and more frequently and by more and more people - also because they can be used in numerous situations where video, print and other media do not work. The podcast scene is becoming more professional.

The time of the sports groups is coming - Professional football is caught between profit and sport. In 2017, we will see a continuation of the entrepreneurial development of the clubs. In the medium term, structures like those of a corporation will emerge. Not everyone can go along with this - a division of professional football into clubs and sports groups could emerge in the long term.

From public value to orientation towards the common good: In 2017, media and infrastructure providers will more intensively determine their benefits for society. Public value analyses will become a modern tool for measuring performance and enable greater transparency and control. The user's perspective is central and a comprehensive mix of methods is important.

The 2017 Trend Monitor trends have been published every working day since the end of November 2016 in the Goldmedia Blog and first published as a series of articles on Kress.de. The Trendmonitor 2017 was published as a study on December 19, 2016. The study can be here (PDF, direct link).