FEATURE
DATA, DATA AND MORE DATA In early June, the media and entertainment industry came together for MediaTech 360, our annual event dealing with themes of challenge and opportunity within the sector. Over the coming pages, we review the panels, presentations and case studies from the two days. We begin with a review of the event from this year’s chair, Christy King.
I
never thought I’d write the words “fascinating” and “database” in the same sentence, but the evolution of the media industry is happening at a rate that leaves many participants marveling at new realities every day. This second annual MediaTech 360 event opened up by touching on a wide variety of what I would call “media distribution issues.” Several presentations touched on absorbing sport-specific business concepts, many that will likely make their way into the rest of the media business as the months go by. From there each presentation and panel extended those ideas to a deep dive into data issues – from consumer data to metadata to ad data – we hosted a wide variety of media professionals discussing issues related to the gathering of data, storing, organising, using and sharing data. This, of course, is an incredibly hot topic at the moment with governments and companies figuring out how to gather, integrate, and use, the data they have today. It is clear that today’s consumers are viewing and sharing more video content than ever before, and that use provides media businesses with a trove of data that can serve as a treasure – if used well. We learned that the challenge for the media industry isn’t gathering data, but rather connecting with a huge variety of data sources, integrating that information, and analysing data to glean actionable insights. It quickly became evident that media companies have moved far past fear and
have become excited by the opportunities that various kinds of data offer in everything from guiding preference in content acquisition and development, improving advertising relevance, and reducing subscription churn. We have moved beyond the challenges of collecting data and are squarely in the throes of figuring out how best to take advantage of all that available information. In fact, several speakers gave fascinating examples of their work that showed clear proof of value. I think we all ended up with a sense of excitement for the possibilities ever-improving data analysis will afford in future media business efforts. Sports companies are typically at the forefront of media technology innovation, and our speakers from sports businesses provided an interesting look at some of the things they have learned from consumer habits, transaction data, and advertising relevance data. It was clear that the valuable lesson is that everyone in the media business has to figure out how to identify effective sources of data – and not just from customers – but including publishers, artists, producers, and content creators. Our session on AI and Machine Learning could have easily held all of our attention for several hours of discussion, as those two topics alone are huge, fascinating, and evolving at high speed. It led directly into a wrap up session where another creative and interesting group of professionals could have
entertained the MediaTech 360 audience with their predictions of where the market is going for the rest of the evening. While both panels touched on an intriguing variety of media and data ideas, it is clear that we are experiencing an unprecedented rate of change in an industry that is booming with possibility. I, for one, can’t wait for the next TVBEurope event to find out what new and exciting media business opportunities people are tackling in businesses across the industry.
18 | TVBE JULY / AUGUST 2018
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