Louise Holmes, Meta‘s Director of Global Partnerships for EMEA, has warned that the industry hasn’t paid enough attention to the creator economy must respond with more “urgency” to the challenge. She also called on producers not to “deify or fear” AI’s role in the future of production.
Meta’s Director of Global Partnerships for EMEA recalled how she young adult audiences began changing their consumption habits while she was a TV exec at the likes of Paramount Global predecessor Viacom and the BBC, but that the industry had chosen not to follow where they were going.
“What I found particularly on the younger-skewing 16-34 demo channels — the likes of BBC3, Comedy Central and MTV — was that younger audiences were no longer on the TV bus,” she said in a keynote presentation this morning at Content London in the UK. “In fact, they weren’t even at the bus stop waiting for the TV bus to come. Of course, now we know they were all making their own way to the land of digital.
“This rapid migration of TV viewers was the canary in the TV coalmine. By the time I left Viacom to join Meta, the canaries had flown the mines and set up homes at Netflix, YouTube, Instagram and the soon-to-exist TikTok.
Holmes joined Meta in January 2020 after a TV career that included a six-year spell at Paramount Global predecessor Viacom, and senior roles at the BBC and Discovery Italy. She oversees Meta’s global partnerships in EMEA, working with creators, public figures, businesses, studios and other content creators to create better impact on social media on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
Noting that tech firms such as Meta are more fearful of missing the next trend rather than missing one that already exists, and challenged the TV to adopt similar mindsets. “Living the future is one of our values at Meta, said Holmes. “It’s not a comfortable way to live and can be exhausting at times, but it is exhilarating.
“For all our best attentions, I don’t think we in the media industry pay enough attention to the future and what the next generation are actuallly doing right now; what they consumer and create as opposed to how we assume or expect that they will. We need to respond with enough urgency.”
Later in the chat, Holmes outlined the various AI tools that Meta is creating, and described how they could help and speed up production.
“Don’t be afraid of AI,” she said. “Make a point of understanding it, embrace it, experiment and make it work for you.”
She said the industry “Should be cautious of either deifying it or fearing” AI, adding: “After all, the things we fear most are often those we understand least. Personally, I see AI not as a threat but as an opportunity.”
