Author: Ryan Williamson
The global media and entertainment industry has witnessed profound changes over the past couple of decades, thanks to technology’s rapid evolution. However, the thing about technology is that it is prevalent and doesn’t affect just one industry. To cut a long story short, the advancement of technology has shaped and transformed the media and entertainment industry and the customers it serves. Take content streaming, for example; even though it is an entirely new form of content consumption, it is well on its way to overshadow conventional mediums. Similarly, there are plenty of other technologies that have had a very disruptive effect on the media and entertainment industry. However, none has had an impact quite like big data.
Clearly, the sector has some big challenges to contend with, thanks to preferences and needs. Companies in this sector must keep up with these changes to be successful even in a cut-throat market. And you know what has been helping M&E companies do precisely that? Big data. With more and more data being generated at a mind-boggling pace, big data helps media companies leverage their goldmines of data to achieve better customer engagement, improve their operations’ profitability, etc. Let’s take a look at some of the other ways it is helping media and entertainment companies.
1. Customer churn insights: Big data delivers incredibly in-depth insights into various factors that have a bearing on the business. In this case, it offers insights about customers and their usage patterns, such as when they are most likely to watch content, what kind of content they watch, etc. Such data is vital for understanding why customers may unsubscribe from a given service and formulating strategies to prevent customer churn.
2. Foretell customer preferences: It has been for everyone to see that how we consume media and content today is entirely different from how we went about till just a few decades ago. Such changes, of course, present challenges and opportunities for companies as well, provided they can understand what their customers want. For this, big data helps them predict demand for genres, topics of interest for various age groups, etc. Based on this, companies can foretell any shifts in trends, patterns, audience interest and more to help companies adapt accordingly.
3. Better revenue: Yet another crucial aspect where big data has proven to be invaluable is revenue. It analyzes what customers want, what’s in vogue in the market, the target audience’s viewing history, etc. to offer recommendations about generating better sales, adapting marketing strategies, fine-tune the when and where of content delivery, etc. All these measures seek to ensure high customer engagement rates and thus, better revenue for the company.
The sheer amount of data at the disposal of this industry is a big giveaway of the value it holds. This is why media entertainment solutions fortified with big data are poised to be the next big thing in the industry.