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HITS Big Data Breakfast – Calling All “Evolutionaries”

Just about three-and-a-half years ago, I made a pretty big change in ye ole career path, and left a life-time in production, post and digital media to join the rock-star of all data warehousing and analytics companies, Teradata. Yes, my role was to oversee Media & Entertainment go-to-market strategy and marketing – but it still felt like a lifetime away from encoding and transcoding, and content distribution, and DI, and…. To be honest, I wondered for a long time if I might lose my M&E chops.

Life has a funny way of coming full circle. Just last Thursday, I had the privilege of joining some of Hollywood’s best and brightest on a panel to discuss big data analytics in media & entertainment. An event hosted by MESA and the Hollywood IT Society, and sponsored by Teradata (among others), the Big Data Analytics Breakfast marked the first exclusively M&E-focused big data event of its kind.

Flanked by senior execs from Disney, Sony and NBCUniversal (read MESA’s write-up here), our panel spent more than 60-minutes gabbing about the criticality of big data analytics –and analytics in general –  in Media & Entertainment in front of another 70 senior-level technology executives.

The interest and excitement in the room was evident – so evident that we were unceremoniously cut-off and booted when our Q&A threatened to well-exceed our allotted time. It’s not that often I see a new business opportunity incite that kind of interest and engagement. There is so much to be said on the role of big data analytics for our industry.

Here are some gems for big data use that we’ve seen with our customers, and which were echoed throughout the big data event:

• Programming & Scheduling – using Twitter, Facebook and other social media feedback to make ad-hoc scheduling changes
• Ad Effectiveness – using big data to attribute ad engagement (say, via the STB or second screen)
• Theatrical Marketing On-Demand – shifting marketing allocations and spend in near-real-time based on regional box-office outcomes
• Content Recommendations – one word: Netflix
• Site Personalization – understanding your customer’s title, genre and other preferences via big data, and using that insight to tailor their experience with your site, or target them to receive specific marketing communications

For about the last 18 months, I’ve been watching the intensity around analytics skyrocket with studios, OTTs, cable companies, publishers and other Media & Entertainment companies. It’s honestly about time. I really believe analytics are at the core of our industry’s future – particularly as we evolve to have the kinds of deep one-to-one audience relationships that new distribution platforms (like OTT and Second Screen) allow.

As for me? I guess it makes me feel a little smug — confirming for me over and over again that my supposed career-path change wasn’t all that much of a change; it was really nothing more than an evolution. That’s good for all of us!

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