In an act of brazen foolishness, and despite 17 years of Middle East summers advising against it, I decided to minimise travel last year. I convinced myself that I could handle it. That I was, as the young ones say, Built Different. I am not.
To break the monotony, I revisited The Wire, a series I had completed more than a decade ago. A slow burner in Baltimore is not quite the same as being in France, but it proved something just as compelling.
This time, I watched it differently. At my pace. On my schedule. When Michael K Williams’ Omar gathered momentum, I stayed in Baltimore late into the night, four or five episodes deep. What struck me most was not the series itself, but everything around it. Podcasts, long-form interviews, video essays. An extended universe that simply did not exist during its original broadcast.
This is where the real shift lies.
For years, we talked about the streaming effect in terms of binge watching and cultural snowballs. Group chats dominated by spoilers. But the more meaningful shift is not about pace. It is about infrastructure. Streaming platforms have evolved into media ecosystems built for obsession. They do not merely distribute content. They keep attention, conversation and community in one place.
In 2024, YouTube reported more than one billion hours of daily viewing on connected TVs globally. Spotify confirmed that more than 250 million users engaged with video podcasts during the year. These are not isolated stats. They signal a structural change in how media is experienced. Screens are converging. Long-form is thriving on digital platforms. Audio, video and community increasingly sit side-by-side. The traditional boundaries between broadcaster, platform and publisher matter far less to audiences than they once did.
The Middle East is accelerating this change. In 2024, Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority reported more than 76.9 million visits to events and recreational activities, with Riyadh Season alone attracting more than 16 million people. That is not passive consumption. It is participation at scale. Fandom does not stay on the screen. It turns up in the real world.
We saw YouTube creator MrBeast translate digital challenge culture into a real-world ‘Beast Land’ attraction during Riyadh Season. Automotive brands such as Nissan have embedded themselves into gaming and esports activations on the ground, inviting audiences to compete rather than observe. Content is the entry point. Experience is the multiplier.
For marketers, three points stand out.
First, the myth of collapsing attention spans needs retiring. WARC reported in 2024 that high quality, long-form storytelling continues to drive stronger brand recall and emotional connection than shorter interruptive formats. If the story earns it, audiences will invest time. The issue is not duration. It is value.
In media terms, this challenges the assumption that impact only comes from short bursts and frequency. Platforms built for immersion reward depth. If committed fans are prepared to invest hours in a story, our planning should reflect that. Long-form storytelling and sustained narratives are not luxuries in this environment. They are logical responses to how people now consume media.
Second, fandom now travels. It moves from episode to podcast, from social thread to live event and, increasingly, into commerce. Media is no longer a sequence of placements. It is an interconnected journey. A viewer who discovers a series on a streaming service may encounter analysis on YouTube, join a discussion on social platforms and attend a related event weeks later.
This calls for joined-up thinking. Audiences do not experience media in silos, so our planning cannot live there either. Attention builds across platforms and over time. The opportunity is not simply to buy touchpoints, but to connect them in a way that feels coherent to the person on the other side of the screen.
Third, brands that build worlds rather than campaigns are increasingly rewarded with deeper engagement. That requires discipline. It means thinking beyond a burst of media weight and asking harder questions. What is the universe we are inviting people into? How does it extend across platforms? Where does it show up in the real world?
The evolution of streaming has normalised immersion and deep cultural participation. Obsession, in its healthiest sense, is no longer a fringe behaviour. It is a defining force within modern media.
I will travel more this summer. Probably somewhere cooler than Baltimore. But even if plans change, I know there are entire worlds waiting behind a login screen. The opportunity for the media industry is not to interrupt those worlds, but to understand the communities that form within them and to help brands earn a place in
the conversation.
By Sunjay Malik, Senior Director at PHD.
