The sweeping, dynamic transformation of media and entertainment is attributed to how digital media has become so widespread, taking a leading role in the industry’s future. Whether it’s TV, films, gaming, advertising, animation, and VFX, or music and radio, we can see that the move to digital has opened up new revenue generation schemes.
However, given how large the competition is in this ever-shifting market, an M&E company will always need to stay at the top of its game and secure the latest technologies to remain successful.
As we’ve written about this in a previous post, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the biggest rages nowadays, and it’s also taking digital media solutions by storm. But what are the best ways to leverage AI and gain its benefits in your business ventures?
Why is AI Important for the Media Industry?
There’s no doubt that focusing on your customers’ satisfaction is the most important part of any digital media business model. As such, your customers’ needs and preferences must be kept front and center during every stage of the decision—making and subsequent implementation.
We’ve all experienced how digital transformation makes business more customer-centric, and the essential element of that is customer experience (CX). AI in retail, e-commerce, mobile, social, and several other associated areas is an emerging, disruptive tech because of this. This is also why it’s crucial for media companies that want to remain both successful and profitable.
Customer data is being transformed into advanced analytical insights by the continuous improvements in Machine Learning (ML) and deep learning that boost AI performance. This, in turn, ensures that you’ll have precious data that can be leveraged when creating customer-focused programs, increase personalization, and ultimately achieve greater customer retention as well as acquisition. In addition, the data collected and processed by an AI increases the chances for cross-selling/upselling and makes targeted marketing campaigns more efficient.
Which Areas Are Impacted by AI?
Cognitive AI
Turning seemingly “useless” user information into relevant, correlated, and useful data is the goal of cognitive techs like AI, ML, and natural language processing (NLP). Once this transformation is complete, the newly categorized data can be put into databases, which can be used to gain unique insights about customer behaviors, drive better customer engagement scenarios, and enhance the creation of targeted content that achieves higher monetization.
Real-Time Streaming
A tool that is useful for both broadcaster and customer as well. AI solutions facilitate real-time customization, packaging, and transmission of content. Furthermore, it can improve advertisement sales through dynamic ad insertion while allowing ad revenues from live sports events to be maximized through digital billboard replacement.
Predictive Analytics
Popular media content is precious; therefore, it pays off to analyze it and identify preferred content types for the various audiences and niches. Marketing plans, offerings, altered content, and distribution windows benefit immensely from advanced analytics capabilities. Just as importantly, it will also help determine which content resonates best with a particular audience, allowing you to pick the best-performing content to ramp up revenue generation.
Deep Learning
Processing unstructured data is what deep learning is about. And the result is information that is usable for video, speech, image, and text analytics. By coupling advanced analytics with customer data—demographics, viewing preferences and usage time, current trends, and more—you’ll be able to realize AI-based content improvements and enable dynamic ad insertion into their offerings. This, in turn, leads to better, AI-powered CX.
AR/VR
AI is an indispensable tool for developing AR/VR interactive content, video games, and events. To truly give viewers the feelings and sensations of a live event, the provisions of 360° view enabled and enhanced through AI become mandatory. But in general, from VR sports events to shopping, AI-powered AR/VR will increase proactive engagement of customers, ultimately allowing retail shops and event organizers to include predictive merchandise in their offerings.
AI Advantages in AI/VR and Advertising
To put it simply, AI is your go-to tool to connect with your consumers and run campaigns that massively rely on and leverage user information gained from in-app and social media behaviors. Then, through predictive analytics, the AI turns that data into usage patterns that can help understand your customers’ preferences, resulting in better segmentation and targeting.
But what are the exact advantages realized in adjacent areas of the industry?
Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality (AR/VR)
These two are also among the most sought-after technologies in media and entertainment, so it comes as no surprise that they can be combined with AI solutions for incredible outcomes. Whether it’s life, 360° video streaming enhanced by AR, personalized experience of live events using mobile screen and 360° videos, or gamification and VR interaction, if AI is involved and integrated the right way, the results will be phenomenal. It can also be used in conjunction with map-based services for increased augmentation.
Events and Advertisements
From dynamic ad insertion, enriched advertisements that engage users and enable personalized VR e-commerce, through chatbots providing instant assistance, to real-time, trigger-based live events, AI is key in enhancing all these practices. The goal with both live events and personalized ads is to engage customers and capture their attention. An AI solution not only helps to collect the data needed to do that, but it will also automate these processes—for example, through loyalty programs for increased referrals. Moreover, the predictive analysis will facilitate better recommendation, ensuring that the right content is shown to the right audience based on their preferences, enabling maximum earning potential.
Just like all the other industries that reaped massive benefits from AI-powered analytics and automation, companies within media and entertainment only stand to gain from investing in AI solutions. The insights, personalization options, and enhanced CX enabled by these technologies are must-haves in today’s highly competitive media environment, and once implemented, the results are immediately tangible. Have you considered improving your services through AI?
Interested to learn more about our Media Intelligence services? We utilize AI to improve CX, automate processes, provide dynamic ad insertion, and harness ML, NLP, and neural networks to deliver cutting-edge AI applications and enhance the experience for your viewers.
Our full-scope OTT solution, ENT.360, is an enterprise-ready, software-only AWS native architecture with DAI and SSAI implementation included. With it, we architected and developed a global, monetized content distribution platform for a market-leading streaming service provider that was available in 50+ countries across more than 15 devices. ENT.360 is a Well-Architected Solution