You would never drive with your eyes closed, but we see many operators running their TV business without understanding what is happening with this service – they are seeing outcomes but have very limited insight as to what is driving these outcomes.
In this blog, I’ll look at how analytics can transform the way operators run their TV service. With their eyes wide open and a clear view of their TV service, operators can make the correct operational and business decisions to drive a compelling service for their customers.
Traditional TV services like cableTV provided consumers with an alternative to over the air (rabbit ears) delivery – they focused on turning fuzzy TV to crystal clear TV. Technology has changed significantly since those initial deployments and TV is now delivered using IP. Early streamers like Netflix pioneered adaptive bit rate (ABR) delivery of TV signals to consumers and device innovators like Apple, Roku and Google have created new ways for the user to access the content. The significant and continued investment in broadband has meant that a large majority of households now have high speed connections to the internet. PayTV providers are embracing the same technologies to deliver their TV services.
As the internet has evolved, so has the data that can be collected – companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon collect enormous amounts of data about their consumers and use this to drive their business. Media companies like Hulu and Netflix do this as well – leveraging data to monitor service quality as well as directing business decisions. PayTV has been slow to embrace the use of data to drive its operations and business strategy. Traditionally data has been very scarce for TV with STB logs perhaps offering the most detail. But even where logs were available it was hard to use these as they were often written as software logs, intended to assist in debugging software rather than driving business needs and they could be verbose meaning it was hard to find useful/relevant information among the large volume. This type of information was not always current, and information might not be available until 24 or more hours after it was first recorded. All of this meant there was no easy way for an operations or business user to easily view the information relevant to them from amongst the logs.
With IP delivery of TV services then internet-based monitoring and reporting are much easier. This means that a wealth of information can be made available to operations and business organisations. Using EspialTV as an example the following type of information is available. For the operations team information on devices used for viewing TV and OS versions used on those devices; the video profiles viewed (higher profiles = higher quality experience for the user); Channel change times; Errors logged by category and information on reboots – by type of device and by specific devices. For the business team information on most watched and least watched shows and channels; usage for each service (Live, Recorded, On Demand); per hour consumption of TV and trending over time – including the ability to assess the impact of campaigns on the service. All these metrics are made available through an easily accessible Web portal and users can select the time they wish to view the metrics over. For example, a product manager looking for feedback on the impact of a campaign might look at a monthly view – two weeks before and two weeks after. An operations manager might look at the errors in almost real-time to determine if there is an issue with the service.
As this information is made available to operators, they are starting to realise the benefits and take advantage – but the information has been so limited in the past that it is taking some time for them to fully realise the potential of the new rich, easily accessible dataset. Some interesting metrics that operators using EspialTV have already reported include the high viewing of Live TV versus other TV services; seasonal variation in TV consumption – with lower consumption rates in the summer months; mobile devices used for shorter viewing time versus 10-foot experience. Armed with easy access to data on their operations, operators can ensure they run a compelling service for their consumers – always focused on ensuring the highest quality of delivery. Armed with easy access to data on their business, operators can ensure they are investing in the areas of the most impact and measure the outcomes of that investment.
The focus for Enghouse as a technology provider is to offer the easiest access to the most relevant data for operators. The opportunity for operators is to discover new ways to take advantage of this new information to drive their business.
Contact us to find out more on what we are doing to enable data driven decisions about TV services delivery.
