New Relic, the Intelligent Observability company, has released its State of Observability for Media and Entertainment report, providing insights into how AI, containerization, and cloud adoption are transforming observability strategies in the industry. With 35% of media and entertainment professionals citing AI as a core driver of observability adoption, the report underscores how organizations are leveraging intelligent observability to maintain uptime, optimize digital operations, and ensure seamless audience engagement.

AI and Containerization Enhance Digital Operations

AI adoption is at the forefront of observability, with 60% of media and entertainment companies implementing AI monitoring—the highest rate among all industries. Key findings include:

• AI-powered observability: 35% of respondents see AI-assisted runbook generation as the most valuable enhancement, followed by AI-assisted remediation actions (33%) and automatic root cause analysis (32%).

• Containerization surge: Media and entertainment organizations are 34% more likely than other sectors to cite containerization of applications as a driver for observability (30% vs. 23% industry average).

• Multi-cloud and IoT adoption: 35% view multi-cloud migration as a priority, while 33% cite IoT integration as a key factor in adopting observability.

Media & Entertainment Lags in Outage Detection

Despite the critical need for uptime, media and entertainment organizations detect outages 51% slower than other industries, with an average mean-time-to-detection (MTTD) of 56 minutes. Key concerns include:

• High impact of downtime: The industry experiences the most high-business-impact outages per week (63%) and the highest median hourly outage cost ($2.2M per hour) across all industries.

• Reliance on manual methods: Only 43% use observability tools to detect outages, depending instead on incident tickets and manual troubleshooting, highlighting a gap in proactive monitoring.

The Push for Full-Stack Observability

Media and entertainment organizations recognize the need for a consolidated observability platform to link IT performance with business outcomes. However, only 20% have achieved full-stack observability, below the 25% industry average. Additional insights include:

• Challenges in adoption: 39% cite tech stack complexity as the main barrier to achieving full observability.

• Demand for platform consolidation: 56% prefer a single integrated platform, yet only 27% plan to consolidate tools within the next year—the lowest of any industry.

With AI-powered observability delivering 4x ROI, media and entertainment companies must accelerate investments in proactive monitoring, automated incident resolution, and platform consolidation to improve reliability and reduce costly outages.