Why We’ve Reached ‘Peak Scroll’ and the Future of Entertainment Isn’t More Content

We’ve Reached Peak Scroll

There is certainly no shortage of content competing for that time. Nobody has ever asked for more content. Instead, we have reached “peak scroll”, where moving through social feeds has become the modern equivalent of endlessly channel surfing.

The answer isn’t simply to feed that machine faster. It is to give people a reason to stop.

Entertainment succeeds because it has a clear point of view and understands who it is for. In a market where audiences can find something else within seconds, the value lies in being genuinely interesting to a particular group of people. If something is made for someone specifically, it has a much better chance of earning their attention and, from there, reaching a much wider audience.

This will drive the audience behaviors and commercial outcomes entertainment businesses ultimately need. People will watch, subscribe, attend, buy, and return.

AI Can Make the Relationship More Personal

Much of the conversation around AI and entertainment has focused on how it might change production, but its more immediate impact could be in helping entertainment businesses understand and communicate with their audiences at a much more individual level.

I’m a huge sports fan and support the New York Giants. I’ve bought jerseys, attended games, and taken friends and family to MetLife Stadium, yet after every win I receive the same generic communication as everybody else. That’s a missed opportunity from the brand’s perspective.

Part of fandom is the word ‘fanatic’, which implies a kind of irrational belief. Brands need to tap into this raw emotion fans have and spark connection and re-engagement through tailored content.

That’s where AI becomes useful. Not for replacing the shared experience that makes sport and entertainment powerful, but by personalizing communication to bring more people into the moment as it happens, giving them a reason to show up and participate, rather than just catching up after the conversation has moved on.

AI creates opportunities by giving entertainment teams more time to concentrate on the work that actually creates those moments. It can remove some of the manual work around reporting, data, budgeting, and commercial operations, giving people more space to develop the creative ideas that audiences will actually care about.

Data Is Only Useful When You Know What To Do With It

My advice for anyone building an entertainment business today is to put the relationship with the audience at the center, and prioritize it over the appetite for collecting ever more data. Most organizations already have huge amounts of data, but data without knowledge or context is useless.

The challenge is connecting the siloed data so you can learn something useful about the people you are trying to reach, and having the creative capability to act on the insights. That could mean providing a relevant message after a game, a better recommendation, an easier route into a live experience, or knowing when somebody is ready for a deeper commercial relationship.

Technology can make all this faster and more scalable, but it can’t compensate for entertainment that nobody particularly cares about.

As all facets of entertainment continue to converge, this is the most important point. The businesses that succeed won’t be those producing the most content or appearing in the most places. They will be the ones that understand why somebody chooses to spend their limited time with them and create something worthy of that time. This will build a relationship that encourages them to return and builds lifetime value.