The global automatic content recognition market was valued at USD 2,540.8 million in 2023, which is expected to reach USD 5,961.6 million by 2030, progressing with a CAGR of 13.0% during 2024–2030.
This is mainly because of the increasing integration of these solutions in several OTT platforms, linear or connected TVs, and social media websites, to offer viewers better experiences. ACR generates valuable analytical data, which is used to enable content creators and advertisers to analyze viewer engagement and deliver relevant content. This way, ACR allows them to make better data-driven decisions on what content to recommend to users, by identifying what stuff they have previously consumed.
The investment from several verticals, such as media & entertainment, BFSI, consumer electronics, retail & e-commerce, education, IT & telecommunication, healthcare, and government, is growing in advanced technologies to analyze customers’ behaviors, consumption patterns, and preferences and, further, provide them with related solutions. This technology helps these verticals analyze valuable analytical data on user consumption patterns, viewing behaviors, and demographic information, to better understand their target customers and optimize their advertising campaigns, thus resulting in improved customer engagement and conversion rates.
Additionally, the adoption of the AI/ML and IoT technologies is rising to handle the big data generated from ACR systems, to take data-driven decisions to improve the user experience, by making more-accurate predictions based on viewing patterns.
The cloud deployment mode is expected to grow the faster over this decade as different hosting models, such as IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, and FaaS, offer cost-effectiveness, scalability, flexibility, accessibility, and other advantages while deploying applications, depending on the specific requirements and complexity of the applications. This enables automatic content recognition solutions to effectively handle vast volumes of data and provide remote access capabilities. Furthermore, the collaboration of various cloud-based service providers, including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, with ACR solution developers contributes to the improved performance of automatic content recognition solutions in diverse industries.
On the basis of platform, OTT applications captured 40% market share in 2023, and they continue to grow at a significant rate. This is due to the increasing adoption of Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Disney+. They use this technology to recommend personalized content, target ads effectively, verify content by correct audio & video fingerprinting or watermarking, and enhance the second-screen experience.
The audience segmentation & measurement category is growing tremendously because this application has become essential for several businesses for knowing their customers, since it offers targeted advertising, content optimization, performance monitoring, monetization choices, and improved user experiences. Further, the demand for ACR solutions has been increasing as a result of their ability to help platforms, advertisers, and content creators take data-driven decisions on improving their content delivery techniques.
Consumer electronics is expected to be the fastest-growing category in the automated content recognition market, at a CAGR of 14.2%, during the forecast period.
The market advance in this end user category is fueled by the growing usage of smart devices, such as smartphones, smart TVs, and wearables, as well as the rising popularity of streaming services. By offering tailored suggestions and enabling smooth content synchronization across platforms, the ACR technology improves the user experience. In addition, it makes interactive features possible, such as the ability to get real-time data on the content being viewed. Moreover, it enables targeted advertising and gathers insightful user preference data, thus helping marketers and content producers customize their offerings.
North America is dominating the worldwide market, driven by the rising adoption of automatic content recognition systems by several sectors and the increasing investments in cutting-edge technologies. The region essentially gains from a thriving media & entertainment sector, the presence of top OTT streaming platforms, content producers, and major international tech firms, such as Google and Apple; and a regulatory climate that encourages ACR innovation.
APAC is predicted to be the fastest-growing market, with a rate of 13.6%, from 2023 to 2030, due to the widespread adoption of process automation techniques across numerous industries and the presence of leading consumer electronics manufacturers, such as Samsung and LG. Additionally, the sizable customer base for such advanced equipment is a key driving force for the market. The population of people using smart devices is the largest in India, Japan, South Korea, and China. This gives organizations across industries the opportunity to analyze the data on digital content consumption shared by these devices with ACR solutions, to gain needful insights.
Some of the key players in the automatic content recognition market are NVIDIA Corporation, Cloudera Inc., IBM Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, Google LLC, Intel Corporation, and Owkin Inc.