This week, more than 100,000 people from over 160 countries around the world will descend on Las Vegas for the annual NAB Show. The great and the good of the broadcast industry will get together to show off the latest technologies and innovation and debate hot topics affecting our ever-evolving industry both now and into the future.

Expect to hear much discussion around the potential of virtual reality, 4K, HDR, OTT… and of course, that key component, content.

Now just last week I attended the Financial Times’s 2016 Digital Media conference. I was there to hear the breadth of conversations and interviews which took place amongst these media gurus. During the event, the audience was asked to post questions which would be answered by the interviewers, and one very frank participant wrote back, “Is anyone bored of the word ‘content’ yet?!”

Understandably, there were a lot of conversations on how content is continuing to evolve (e.g. virtual/augmented reality), where, how much and via which platform. However the main underlying objective of every broadcaster and media provider, was well summarised by Evan Burns (CEO of Odyssey) who spoke about the importance of ensuring relevance, engagement and personalisation.

But what actually can be realised through personalisation within the media and broadcasting industry? How can technology, content and data make it happen?

Let’s have a look at three key areas where personalisation could make a difference.

Content recommendations

According to Ericsson’s ConsumerLab study, respondents reported that recommendations are still not as smart as they’d like them to be.  But why is that the case?  Audiences receive suggestions based on algorithms which, at a basic level, examine their current viewing behaviour.  Sophistication can only occur when engagement with the end audience happens.  Thus the viewer must have a real opportunity to inform their platform on what they do and don’t like.  The TV platform can then feed this information into their systems and produce something meaningful for the end consumer – be it dependent on mood, circumstance or even the weather.

Targeted advertising

Whilst there are not many consumers who will admit to be lovers of adverts, the ability to be able to serve content to the masses using a freemium model often relies on advertisers being able to serve up scripted and glossy ads, which they believe are served to you at the most appropriate time.  The monetization of advertising however will – and needs to- continue to evolve.  This brings us back to the issue of relevance.  Would you rather watch a holiday program and have the ability to book a table in the restaurant that you just saw in the program or be shown ads from travel agents in the traditional way?   The technology and data to personalize what is shown to you is now available to make the first option a reality. So watch this space.

Search

Similar to recommendations, search is another area which some TV platforms often get wrong.  To personalise a search, a consumer needs the tools, technology and dataset which can help them discover what it is they are looking for.  Taking lessons from the biggest search engine in the world – Google – semantics are now key to any intelligent platform.  Fundamental is the use of the metadata to understand the context and intent behind the search and hence feed a more enriched and relevant result.

Whilst personalisation seems like a ‘nice to have’, it is now time for the industry to start making personalisation a priority and a reality for consumers, the world over.  A statistic which caught my eye yesterday states that by 2019, it will take an individual over five million years to watch the amount of (video) content that will be streamed every single month (Cisco Visual Networking Index, Forecast and Methodology 2014-2015).  Hence more and more of that lovely word ‘content’ is going to be made available.  The industry must now provide the tools and data to help us, the viewer, to discover what we want and cut through the clutter!

At this year’s NAB, I expect that this topic will continue to be one of the top key themes for the industry as a whole.  For Ericsson, this is no different.  Our CTO, Steve Plunkett, will be presenting a keynote speech on whether data science can personalise the media industry; definitely something to watch out for, if you’re attending this year’s event.

Jennifer Walker, Product Marketing Manager, Content Discovery and Access Services