Pixitmedia by DataCore’s inaugural global State of Media Archiving survey has revealed a decisive industry shift in media and entertainment (M&E), with 85 per cent of respondents planning to migrate to a horizontally integrated approach to their asset and media management.

This signals a clear departure from fragmented, multi-generation systems, as integration costs, data silos and inefficient collaboration increasingly threaten operational scalability and efficiency.

The survey, which questioned 330 M&E professionals, identifies the main drivers of this transition as rising integration costs, multi-generational legacy system complexities, and siloed data libraries that hinder scalability and cross-team collaboration. Nearly half of respondents (45 per cent) cite automation, metadata enrichment, and third-party integration, as key workflow challenges.

In response, three quarters (76 per cent) of organisations plan to increase technology budgets over the next 12 months to modernise archiving capabilities to support content-intensive operations.

As of 2025, only 6 per cent of M&E companies have fully migrated to a single platform approach to media archiving. Digital service providers (10 per cent) and houses of worship (7 per cent) lead early adoption, while TV and video broadcasters remain the slowest, with just 3 per cent completed and 10 per cent reporting no migration plans. Adoption intent, however, is strong. 75 per cent of houses of worship are currently evaluating ROI and business benefits, and all sports franchises surveyed plan to migrate within the next 24 months.

Hybrid deployments continue to dominate across M&E strategies, preferred by 42 per cent of respondents. Looking ahead, 40 per cent expect hybrid setups to remain their preferred configuration in 2026. Adoption varies by sector, with houses of worship (69 per cent) and enterprise video teams (58 per cent) leading the way. Currently, a quarter of respondents (25 per cent) favour on-premises deployment, a figure expected to rise to 31 per cent among those planning to host media archiving workflows in-house over the next 12 months.

AI-driven media archiving is now a top priority across nearly every M&E segment. Up to 39 per cent of studios and 46 per cent of enterprises are embedding AI/ML to enhance content operations. Almost half (45 per cent) of respondents cited operational productivity as the primary benefit of AI/ML integration in media archiving workflows, with metadata enrichment, automated search and deduplication the most in-demand AI capabilities.

“Our findings underscore what many in the industry already feel: traditional, siloed media archiving systems can’t keep up, and workflows must evolve to meet new operational realities,” commented Barry Evans, SVP of Product Development, Pixitmedia. “With data and content libraries expanding across both traditional and digital-native segments, migrating to a unified, horizontally integrated approach enables companies to streamline operations, support collaboration across regions, and position themselves for sustainable growth in an increasingly content-driven market.”

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Tags: data, Media, pixitmedia