The Future Trends of Live Streaming in Business

At present, streaming videos account for almost two-thirds of all internet traffic, and live streaming is being used more and more by various industries. Indeed, the potential future of live streaming can benefit all kinds of businesses in many ways. Here are some of the key future trends that are on the way.

 Live Streaming Is Transforming Communication and Online Customer Behaviour

From internal communications to showcasing products to potential customers, more and more businesses are using live streaming to effectively communicate with employees, customers, and clients. When it comes to communicating with shoppers to showcase the latest products, live streaming is particularly transforming online shopping habits. Take the e-commerce site Taobao Live. In 2019, the platform’s live streams resulted in a breath-taking revenue of $2.85 billion (USD).

Taobao even has a standalone app dedicated to e-commerce live streaming. Amazon is another company that has recently added a live streaming sales platform, with Amazon Live. So, live video shopping will certainly be one live streaming trend we will see more and more in the future. Live streaming is also allowing certain businesses to provide different services to customers. For example, online casinos are increasingly using live streaming technology to provide a live casino experience to players, where they play games like roulette and poker in real-time with human croupiers, thus going far beyond the typical slots and table games found at online casinos.

Intelligent Data Automation Is Becoming Enhanced

Live streaming is able to gather a lot of data, and businesses are starting to use that to their advantage. Every time users interact with live streams, a large amount of data surrounding consumption patterns is produced. Forward-thinking organisations are taking advantage of the streaming data that is floating around in the digital sphere by leveraging the information to improve all manner of things. Businesses can enhance the personalisation of their marketing targets, streamline distribution, and improve the way content indexing is completed. With the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning, data gained from live streaming will soon be able to go way beyond repetitive automation and move toward dynamic intelligence.

Language Barriers Will Be Overcome

Although many video sharing platforms provide subtitle options, you do not typically get that with a live stream. That is changing, though. The day is soon approaching where you will be able to watch live streams with native language subtitles. It is already being seen with services like Microsoft Azure’s Cognitive Speech Services. Soon, live streams will be automatically translated from one language to another. That will transform the way that businesses operate, as it will be so much easier to provide one live stream that can be used internationally instead of having to produce different streams for different global markets.

Latency Will Be Improved

One of the main issues with live streaming is its latency. In recent years, tools have been developed to deliver low-latency live streaming at scale. Things like WebRTC, SRT, and Apple’s Low-Latency HTTP Live Streaming extension are transforming live streaming latency, and in years to come, companies will be able to embrace such technologies even more to make live streaming seamless. When businesses are the first to use the latest tech, they will be able to attract more users and convert more traffic into bona fide customers. With 5G, we are already seeing an increase in bandwidth, which means faster speeds and better energy consumption. In the future, things like self-driving cars and remote surgical operations will be possible due to new fast internet speeds, and so will solving live stream latency problems.