Karolina Pelc presents at the CasinoBeats Summit in London in September 2019

One of the most talked about conference sessions at September’s CasinoBeats Summit in London was Karolina Pelc‘s presentation on technology trends and how these may influence future product development.

Pelc, Group CPO of Games Marketing and Felt, and the founder of the Basic Strategy consultancy, opened by highlighting the incredible power of video – and its dramatic rise in influence in recent years.

Reflecting on reported tech trends, Pelc, the former casino director at LeoVegas, said: “‘Video games are the new social media’ – I find that a very powerful statement… So what makes video games such a big threat to the social media platforms?”

She presented forecasts that 80 per cent of all internet traffic will be video by 2020, while Facebook media content will likely be video only as soon as 2021.

“What we are seeing is the expedition of live video streaming into the masses”

At present, 75 per cent of all video plays are on mobile, while video mobile consumption continues to rise by 100 per cent, year on year. The social video industry will be worth an estimated $124.6bn by 2025.

“What we are seeing is the expedition of live video streaming into the masses,” explained Pelc. “There have been a lot of experiments – YouTube trialled it from 2013. Periscope was scooped up by Twitter just after it was launched.

“In February 2016, Facebook agreed a deal with [US broadcaster] ABC to stream the first presidential debate between Clinton and Trump – and this is what really kicked it off. A total of 55 million watched the debate – a very powerful launch.”

But that wasn’t the biggest social video event of 2016. That honour fell to a Texan mum whose unboxing of a Star Wars Chewbacca mask clocked up an incredible 160 million views in just a few days. It became the most watched video of that year.

Watch Karolina Pelc’s full presentation below.

Karolina Pelc will be speaking at CasinoBeats Malta, which will take place at the InterContinental in St Julians on March 24-26, 2020

Learn more about CasinoBeats Malta by visiting the event homepage