Hadoop in Advertising & Media: Is Data Analytics Making Old Media New?

Imagine the chance to truly connect with a customer. Imagine if you knew what movies and television shows they watched, and not only when, but how often. Imagine knowing what screen they watched it on and how they shared it socially. Imagine knowing what they like, or dislike, and knowing it in real-time.

Imagine the chance to truly connect with a customer. Imagine if you knew what movies and television shows they watched, and not only when, but how often. Imagine knowing what screen they watched it on and how they shared it socially. Imagine knowing what they like, or dislike, and knowing it in real-time.

That’s both the challenge and the opportunity for big data in the entertainment industry.

It’s why new Hadoop use cases for advertising and media are being created every day. It’s becoming the best data platform for their marketing, development, and engagement efforts. This is true across the entire industry: in film and TV, music, as well as gaming. 

Here’s where – and why:

Customer Engagement

Real-time data analysis allows firms to know what people are saying, and doing. They can respond on the spot with targeted offers, or, they can recalibrate campaigns that are not working, while diverting resources to those areas having the biggest impact.

When a streaming service sees what a customer has liked in the past, and what their social networks are positive on, they can suggest more appropriately.

That’s just what Beats, a music experience provider, has done.

It’s also what Blizzard Entertainment, the folks behind the massively popular World of Warcraft series is able to do.

This means real-time – as in “now” – engagement with players. It means providing them with prizes and promotions. It also means ensuring the gameplay is at the right level. If a long-time player hasn’t returned in a while, Hadoop can help analyze why. The studio can then revamp the game level to re-attract such players.

Personalized Marketing

Hadoop also gives you a way to understand where your audience and potential audience are. How can you best reach them? What’s the best return on a limited marketing or advertising budget?

This means better customer segmentation, and the ability to truly find where customers are. It also means ensuring a better sense of customer (or potential customer) sentiment and mood.

Are people watching your film or TV series? Are they enjoying it? If not, why, and how can you re-calibrate?

Finding New Revenue in Old Assets

Studios have a library of old films, series, songs, and games. These are a potential gold mine if marketed appropriately. They are low cost, high value, and high return. Hadoop can help locate the potential customers – or current ones – that would be most likely to enjoy your classics.

Connecting Different Business Units

Another key benefit of Hadoop, and the ability to collect insights from an enterprise data hub is the opportunity to ensure that everyone at the studio is speaking from the same page. Creative, Marketing & PR, Finance, Legal, Investor Relations, and Business Development teams will now be aligned. They will have the same insights, the same data, and the same opportunity to address concerns or leap at opportunities.

Why Hadoop?

It’s true that there are other ways to collect and analyze data like this. But nothing provides the same basket of benefits. Here are just a few of the benefits:

1.     The ability to analyze unstructured data from multiple, disparate sources;

2.     the cost per terabyte of data ($1,000 vs. $15,000 for other systems); and

3.     the scalability to handle growth.

The Future is Now

Entertainment has always been a dialogue with consumers. Big data now makes that not just a conversation, but also an informed one. And that can only mean happier customers and better business results.

For more information about how Hadoop can serve your business needs, download The Executive’s Guide to Big Data and Apache Hadoop.