Artificial Intelligence goes back to 1642 when Pascal invented the calculator. In 1955, John McCarthy coined the term AI for the first time and we have been using that term up to date. The automotive industry is leading the AI deployment. As of last year, the AI budget within automotive was about 55.4 Million USD trailed by the health and banking sectors. The media industry is at the end of that trail in terms of media adoption of Artificial Intelligence and its implications on data analysis within that industry.
The BroadcastPro Tech Summit streamed live over two days, between 14-15 June 2021 with panelists Salloum El Dahdaah, CEO White Peaks Solutions, Bachir Boumediene, Director Streaming & IPTV – Telcosm Partnerships MENA, OSN, and Barry Mehdizadeh, CTO Mawarid Media & Communications Group and moderated by Suhail Ahmed, CEO One Diversified FZ LLC, discussed this particular topic.
“Data is very important in this era of streaming. You ought to deliver the best experience to your customers, keep them engaged and drive them to explore your content in a way that enhances growth. None of this can be achieved without Data. It is a selling tool to make informed decisions and reach your business objectives,” Bachir Boumediene, Director Streaming & IPTV – Telcosm Partnerships MENA, OSN said. “What are our viewers seeing, when, where, how to segment them, engage with them and ensure positive feedback from their end to drive acquisition,” he added.
Barry Mehdizadeh said: "Without data, we could not drive the ship. At Mawarid we are currently using data in analytics in fast paste to support us on machine learning and AI in the backend side of our business. Without data and segmentation, we cannot go forward in personalization and discovery".
Elaborating on the topic, Suhail asked Salloum El Dahdaah, CEO White Peaks Solutions: “as an integrator, how do you look at data and how do you help the OTT players enhance their customer experiences?” He answered: “data analysis is the center of our consultancy approach. In our solution, KWIKanalytics, we can retrieve data about what users are searching for, what are they consuming, when and where. Hence, we can advise on what is available on the platform in terms of content acquisition. Without data analysis, you are blind.”
Moving from data analysis to personalization was the most logical sequence of the topic. Suhail asked the panelists about the “eternal user”. How to create it and how to give users a bespoke experience so that they never jump our ships and go elsewhere?
“In my opinion, personalization has been discussed for a long time now. We need to go beyond this point and dive deeper,” Barry asserted. “We are dealing with humans, who have different tastes, moods, watching habits, and needs. Therefore, the question should be how to gather data about all these differences, accumulate it, redefine it and use it in terms of user experience for discovery and deeper personalization, i.e. a mood perspective data analysis.”
Salloum aligned with Barry on that part. He explained that they have been seeing a lot of users who reach the landing page, search for content for around 5 minutes, and quit without consuming any video throughout the different broadcasters platforms they work with. “If a user spends more than 5 minutes without selecting an episode, a pop-up will appear on their screen asking them about their mood or happiness triggers. Based on their feedback we promptly suggest content from the available library on the client site”, Salloum clarified.
Wrapping up, White Peaks Solutions CEO Salloum El Dahdaah stressed that the most important ingredient regardless of data and personalization is content. Technicalities cannot do magic, he said. “We are recommending content based on the availabilities within the client library. If the library isn’t rich and diversified our platform prowess is challenged. Diversity and depth of content are the magic ingredients for a successful personalization process.”