With the increasing focus on digitisation and data-driven marketing, there has been a revolution in the media industry on how it uses data and analytics. The future of the industry is dependent on the amalgamation of both digital and analytical solutions. Enterprises are eager more than ever before to transform media platforms in order to provide more personalised content for its audiences.

According to CloudTweaks, Facebook collects and processes 500 TB of data every day. Google processes 3.5 billion requests daily and Amazon receives 152 million customer purchase data per day. Moreover, newer capabilities, such as master data management (MDM) for digital assets and customer analytics for better customer engagement and personalised product offerings, are being developed to meet industry priorities.

Big Data, too big to ignore:

With the rapidly rising digital consumers, media and entertainment companies have the best chance to leverage their big data assets for more customer engagement. Below are a few examples of how media companies can benefit from big data applications.

Predicting what audiences want

There is no doubt about the amount of data that media and entertainment companies gather on an everyday basis and there is a huge scope of use the data to understand the demand of the genre of shows, music, content for a given age group on different given channels.

Scheduling optimisation

Using insights from big data, these companies are able to understand when customers are most likely to view content and what devices will be used for the same. With big data’s scalability, this information can be analysed at a granular ZIP code level for localised distribution.

Increasing acquisition and retention

By using big data to understand why consumers subscribe and unsubscribe, media and entertainment companies can develop the best promotional and product strategies to attract and retain customers. Consumer data collected from social media user behaviour often reveals overlooked factors that have the potential to drive consumer interest.

Ad targeting

Big data gives a better understanding of the digital media and the consumption behaviour of users across various platforms. By using the tradition demographic data, companies can personalise advertising for users. Media and entertainment companies can also increase digital conversion rates by offering micro-segmentation of customers to their advertising networks and exchanges

Content monetisation and new product development

Big data can also help in additional revenue generation for media and entertainment companies. With accurate data, companies can incentivise consumer behaviour and in the process reveal the true market value of the generated content.  

How media has used analytics

Netflix: Netflix has insights that political fiction dramas, with Kevin Spacey in lead role, were highly trending patterns hence it outbid its competitors like HBO to own the rights to the blockbuster series House of Cards.

Netflix was able to assimilate the vast amount of viewership data, using which it conducted an in-depth and fine-grained analysis of viewers’ habits over many millions of viewings of shows. Netflix could understand the attributes or qualities that were likely to make the show popular; it also knew how long viewers had viewed similar programs, through seasons and individual shows.

Warner Bros. too used Accenture’s Datamart team, Aprimo to implemented software applications with sales data to gain quick access to actionable, accurate reports to support spend decisions,  accumulate knowledge and experience, and apply insights to refine subsequent movie marketing campaigns with past ones, establish invoice collection efficiencies.

Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan’s Chennai Express, one of the biggest box office grosser in 2013, used Big Data & Analytics solutions to drive social media and digital marketing campaigns. IT Services company Persistent Systems helped Chennai Express team with the right strategic inputs. “Chennai Express related tweets generated over 1 billion cumulative impressions and the total number of tweets across all hashtags was over 750 thousand over the 90-day campaign period,” Persistent Systems claimed in a release.

In other instances, several other producers from Bollywood have collaborated with Singapore-based Big Data Analytics firm, Crayon to better understand what kind of music will create buzz for a movie.

Music industry: Lady Gaga and her team browse through our listening preferences and sequences and optimise the playlist for the maximum impact at live events.

What we conclude:

Big Data is a definite boon for the entertainment and sports industry. Having said that, it would not be incorrect to say that the media industry has better access to consumer data than most others. Just by consuming content, users give insights on what format works, the viewing and consumption patterns and even recommendations they would give.

The use of analytics can help media companies solve questions like which formats and channels the consumers will gravitate toward, what content is more likely to be consumed at what time, and how to piece together personalised entertainment from the wealth of options.

Moreover, it will also help to track clicks, views, and shares, across devices and media types. All of these contain information which when properly sifted and understood, can provide the odds for their programming bets.