By Paul Erickson, Research Director, Parks Associates
Improve customer acquisition, retention, and reduce churn
Video services are inherently concerned with subscribership and seek to maximize their performance at each stage of the customer journey, from acquisition to consumption to long-term retention. AI-based analysis of subscriber behavior and activity can better inform subscriber acquisition decisions by identifying factors that drive signup and motivate trial conversions. This can also reduce customer acquisition costs by identifying which offerings and viewers translate into long-term subscription revenues, such as ad-supported video on demand (AVOD). AI-based solutions are a force multiplier for video services, allowing them to address today’s pressing problems of subscriber acquisition, churn, and retention with automation, speed, and insight-driven personalization.
- 37% of US broadband households that subscribed to a new OTT service in the last year are planning to terminate that subscription because of a lack of new content.
- 26% of those cancelling an OTT video service report doing so because they had finished watching the shows they liked, highlighting the importance of connecting subscribers to relevant content to increase retention.
Optimize content portfolio and increase engagement
Content is key to subscriber engagement. AI-enabled content portfolio optimization automates the process of discovering the mix of content that will generate maximum revenue based on analysis of the subscriber base as well as each subscriber. AI also helps ensure content metadata is consistently structured and highly searchable, which improves the ability to identify the right piece of content and the right time to promote it to a subscriber. Video services employing AI-based solutions can increase the revenue generation potential of their content portfolio and maximize engagement with that content. AI can also aid in predicting content demand and help guide future plans and investment in the themes, genres, formats, and distribution platforms that are most likely to generate ROI.
Improve customer experience, personalization, and targeting
Deep understanding of the customer is key to delivering the viewer experiences that ensure their satisfaction and retention. AI enables video services to utilize multiple data sources to gain deeper insight into viewers and to automate the process of delivering a better, more tailored customer experience. These insights can ensure subscriber satisfaction by identifying issues and opportunities for improvement in the customer experience and drive improved outcomes. From the viewing experience perspective, understanding subscriber preferences and habits is essential to delivering content that keeps the subscriber engaged.
By enabling OTT video services to automate the ingest and analysis of many different, heterogeneous sets of big data, AI solutions can drive tighter, more accurate content personalization to maximize engagement and content revenue generation. This smarter, more insightful understanding of the subscriber can also ensure that they are targeted for only the promotional and campaign content that has the best chance of success. Personalization is key to aligning with subscriber needs, delivering customer empowerment, maintaining high engagement, delivering satisfaction, and increasing customer loyalty. AI is essential to delivering deeper, more insightful personalization, using greater amounts of data than has been possible with traditional methods.
Improved content ROI
With rising content costs, competition-driven pricing, and increased pressure to maximize return on investment, it is crucial for services to ensure their expenditures yield content that generates as high a level of consumption and engagement as possible. The greater the level of relevance and interest that the content portfolio has for the subscriber base, the greater the resulting level of subscriber consumption, engagement, and retention. AI and ML allow services to understand what content is best suited to their subscribers and plan their content production and acquisition strategies accordingly. In addition, AI-driven insights can inform a deeper and more personalized flow of both new and existing content to each individual subscriber.
This is an excerpt from Parks Associates whitepaper AI-enabled Data: Key to Video Service Optimization, in partnership with Symphony MediaAI. Download the full whitepaper to learn more about the drivers and use cases for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) – enabled data in the video services market. learn more about how AI-enabled data is the key to video service optimization.
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