OTTAWA – The disruption of the traditional broadcast TV model – the one-to-many into a one-to-one relationship – means that data has become critically important to the future of broadcasting.
Kelly Steen, partnership strategy lead at Wattpad, highlighted how data from its storytelling application is leading to the creation of new types of programming during a session at last week’s International Institute of Communications Canadian chapter conference in Ottawa. For reference, Wattpad has 45 million monthly visitors, adds 103,000 new users every day and has an average viewing time of 30 minutes. All this from a large millennial audience.
She noted that while the vast majority of content on the application will remain in text form, some of it is actually being transformed into film. One such story saw average engagement time of two hours and it has now been picked up by Paramount for development.
Perhaps one of the most important data points the company has is the genres most read and viewed. This engagement time reveals some of the more popular and emerging subgenres that might be ripe for video program development. She pointed to puppet horror and dark mermaid content as being very popular. (This is, of course, indicative of the significant millennial audience engaged on the platform.)
In the online video world, particularly the unregulated space like YouTube, monetizing the eyeballs remains the big challenge. For Steven DeNure, president and COO at DHX Media, this is where average watch time is important. He said this data is critical for advertisers as they strive to monetize their investments.
The traditional broadcasting industry, on the other hand, is still attempting to grapple with the big data issue. A CRTC working group on set top box data kicked off about 18 months ago and as been trialing a new way to develop a sort of “common currency” for this type of consumer viewing information, explained Johanne Lemay, co-president of Lemay Yates Associates.
The first phase of the trial was three broadcast distribution undertakings (BDUs) in Toronto. It now being expanded to a larger area with more broadcast distributors. The second stage in the project is expected to be implemented in March 2017.
This is one example of having data that shows what’s working and how the data retrieved can be used, she said.
Talking about data and content wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Netflix. The company is an extensive of user of viewing data, through a recommender system, to keep its customer base engaged with its content. Engagement is very important, noted Lemay, saying that consumers take between 60 and 90 seconds to make a choice on Netflix. If customers can’t find anything to watch, they switch the channel so to speak.
“That’s quite a short time to capture the imagination of consumers,” she said. “They have to pretty much on the spot make sure that they stay in engaged because if you don’t capture their attention within that time frame (they switch away) and if they do it three or four times, they just drop the service. So you have to keep them engaged.”
This is why that first page on Netflix is so important.
“The presentation of that first page is absolutely critical to making sure that you keep your subscribers. They keep coming back, they find something they want to watch and it works,” said Lemay.
