MIP London: This is not a transition, it’s a rupture!

By Tom Evans | VP, Head of Account Management & Customer Success | Whip Media

I recently attended #MIPLondon2026, and it was fascinating! I loved seeing so many people as always, above all at the Whip Media Mixer on Monday night. MIP London highlighted the fact that our industry is changing dramatically – or as Evan Shapīro forcefully put it; we must “Change or Die.“

I’ve now written many times about the impact of changes affecting our industry, but at MIP, I got the sense that we’re truly experiencing a rupture – not a shift – in the ecosystem. Things will soon have changed beyond all recognition compared to the industry we inhabited only a few years ago. This rupture has been shaped by a number of seismic shifts, spanning people, technology and business models. Many were in evidence at MIP, so I’ve included a list of the top six takeaways for those of you who were unable to attend:

1. “Everything is TV” (or the audience doesn’t care)

We rightly concern ourselves with how to support a fragmented ecosystem that is here to stay (a key topic at #IBC2025 as discussed here). But while we devise strategies to support content distribution across a myriad different products and platforms, most audiences are blissfully unaware of terms like “Linear”, “FAST” or “Social Video”.

To many viewers, everything they watch is just “TV”. How video got to the screen in front of them isn’t really important. It’s my view that audiences will continue to consume content on a range of devices, depending on their moods, for some time to come. But research shared by analysts at MIP indicates that people are increasingly watching their favourite shows or streams back in their living room on a (connected) TV.

So what do audiences really care about?:

• Convenience and accessibility aka content discovery: Content discovery is a perennial problem, which we still haven’t properly solved. Audiences can now pick from a huge content menu that includes more choice than ever before: ‘traditional’ programming; User Generated Content; (Video) Podcasts; specialist content and Influencer-created shows. Yet content discovery remains one of the big issues which we’ve still not solved as an industry. Data (see below) is part of solving this challenge, but we haven’t solved it yet.
• Personalization and rapid Format development: Where there has been major progress, is in the ability of platforms – primarily social platforms – to deliver more personalised content to audiences. This is one way at least that content discovery has improved. Influencer and social platforms are using data to target personalized content ever more effectively, but it was also interesting to see how data and audience sentiment is increasingly being incorporated into green-lighting shows online and untapped audiences. From micro-dramas to game-shows influenced by #SquidGames, the relatively low barrier to entry for online distribution is opening the gates to a wide range of new programmes and formats which can explode overnight. Whether they have long-term traction remains to be seen.
• Quality Storytelling: Despite some of the growing range of formats, it was clear from a number of panels, that interesting stories, told by great storytellers are still the most important way of getting and keeping audiences. There is less money being spent on content by traditional content buyers, but storytelling remains one of the main differentiators for companies across the industry. This remains true for more traditional content producers, broadcasters, Podcasters and online.
• Shared Experiences: As PSBs make shows available on-demand more widely than ever before, the number of shared societal events, driven by shared watching experiences has diminished. But the value of Shared Experiences still exists. Whether it’s for sporting events like The Superbowl, Premier League or the Olympics or spin-offs of online-only events, like The Rest Is Politics on tour, it’s interesting to see how the notion of a shared experience is evolving. Moreover, as demonstrated by the mega-hit The Traitors, there are still signs that audiences haven’t given up entirely on great content that they can watch and like with friends.

2. Knowledge is power

Gone are the days when media companies could simply make decisions based on gut feel – from numerous panels, it was clear that data is a pivotal part of decision-making. From Insights teams, to Marketing, to Content Buyers and Sellers, it was evident that a clear data strategy and effective means of reporting on key business metrics is more important than ever. Many media organisations who have expanded rapidly into new regions and via new platforms, have a common challenge – obtaining and structuring data in a useful way, to help them understand which programmes have been hits and which have missed the mark. The importance and value of data was relevant to many sessions in areas like content performance measurement, the rise of international content and how to distribute effectively on social video.

3. The Great Platform realignment

Luminate shared some fascinating data underpinning one of the major structural shifts we’ve experienced over recent times: Not the migration from linear to digital, but the next phase on – the migration from more regional to global streaming platforms. They rightly identified an interesting dynamic perhaps facilitating this change which is the explosion of International content on global (primarily meaning US-based) streamers.

In a separate panel, 3Vision highlighted that whilst the vast majority of scripted contentremains behind a paywall, there have been some other major changes affecting the streaming world. Some key trends of note were:

• Pay TV’s Continued Decline: Looking at 2018 – 2025 data, it’s clear that Pay TV audience share has dropped ahead of all other major segments. All signs indicate that this is going to continue apace.
• Global Over Local: It’s inarguable that major US streaming giants have wrestled market share away from local SVOD players over the last 7 years. From my perspective, this shift was put on steroids during Covid and then accelerated further with the rise of Social, particularly YouTube.
• The Rise of “Online First”: Free-to-Air (FTA) platforms are aggressively moving toward online-first windows rather than simultaneous linear broadcasts. This is having a significant impact on the ways in which audiences consume content (see point1 above).

4. Consolidation and radical partnerships ahoy!

Mega-mergers like Banijay + All3Media , and Warner Bros Discovery + Paramount rightly continue to hog the headlines, but there are shifting alliances wherever you look across the industry. “Frenemies” like Netflix have partnered with TF1 , Sky have entered into a range of interesting arrangements with HBO, Disney and Sky; bundles are increasingly prevalent and important: Aggregation is the new survival strategy for many, amidst concerns over rapid churn and audience disloyalty.

5. The era of “new” content giants?

We’re also seeing a rupture in the content creation market.

• Branded Content: The event showcased a fascinating example of how branded productions are rapidly gaining in popularity. Brabus: One Second Wow and Dinner Is Scrapped were great case studies into how high-production-value projects could be funded in future, as a direct response to budget shifts amongst traditional players.
• Social & Creator-Led: Players like Goalhanger are proving that YouTube has become a global powerhouse with unique appeals for audiences in terms of reach, depth of topic and impact.
• The Global Market: While the US market has been hampered by recent strikes and economic factors, the UK, South Korea, and Canada continue to succeed with productions for the international market. It was really interesting to see how South Korea in particular is embarking on a major international expansion drive.

6. Are we returning to our roots?

One of the most fascinating ideas I heard at the market was aired by Martin Trickey , who argued that the “Broadcast Era” may have been a mere blip in history. He pointed out that historically, i.e. pre-20th Century, communication was usually peer-to-peer, not broadcast to the masses. Martin raised the question of whether the rise of social video is actually us to a more natural state of decentralized, social storytelling. A fascinating thought!