How Data-Enrichment Can Result In Better Content And Ad Engagement On OTT

The last few years have seen a digital revolution in the world of entertainment. People around the globe, more recently in the Asia Pacific region, have been making the switch from traditional TV to subscription-based video and audio streaming. Much of this was already under way when the COVID-19 epidemic hit home. Suddenly, with social distancing measures and lockdowns across most major countries and cities in the region, people are staying home and suddenly their content consumption is off the charts. In fact, there was nearly 200% spike in OTT traffic in April 2020 alone.

During this time, we foresaw not only increased consumption from existing customers but also many new customers onboarding to OTT for the first time in the coming months. It is up to OTT players to ramp up not only their content strategy but also, their consumer insight data points for hyper-accurate and hyper-relevant content and ad optimization. Data enrichment is the way forward.

Why data enrichment

Mobile devices have proliferated in an unprecedented manner in the last few years. Asia leads the pack with five of the top 10 countries with the highest smartphone penetration rate in the world located in Asia. And what do Asians do with their mobile devices? Like Google puts it, EVERYTHING. OTT players have limited first-party data about their customers, especially the content needs of new customers. Most OTTs dont require anything more than a users email or mobile number to get started. This limited data collection reduces their ability to instantly personalize content or ads. Enter data enrichment.

Customer data enrichment using alternative data can ramp up the insight strategy of OTT content and ad platforms. Real world intelligence or the convergence of online and offline behavioural data about customers can help them understand their lives and lifestyles far better than personal data alone ever will. Over at , we combine O2O consumer insights from the recent past, demographic profile, movement patterns, real world affinities, and content consumption to enable OTT players build riccustomer profiles. Consequently, they are able to tailor content recommendations and ad targeting based on the holistic personas of these customers to improve experiences and command better ad rates.

OTT data enrichment at work

For new customers who will onboard on OTT platforms during this lockdown, real-time rich profiling will be crucial for immediate content and ad optimization. Thats one way to get customers hooked from the get-go, especially in times when they have so much choice as well as time on hand to explore their options. If theres anything to be learnt from the demise of several popular OTTs recently, is that they must adopt a comprehensive data strategy and scale up with a complete ad offering. OTT players who leverage data enrichment just as their customer numbers are growing significantly will be the ones who win the race not only in the short term but also in the post-COVID world.

If you are ready to take the leap towards data enrichment, reach out for a demo now!