“There’s predicting churn and then there is preventing it,” says Peter Docherty, Founder and CTO of ThinkAnalytics, speaking at IBC 2022. He continues, “A lot of people talk about predicting churn – okay that’s good information but if those viewers are going to leave anyway it’s not very helpful. It’s much better to make sure they don’t unsubscribe in the first place.”
Docherty argues that Think360 – ThinkAnalytics’ personalised content discovery platform – can enable service providers to both predict churn and prevent it. He says that the company is tackling churn from two angles: through content discovery, service providers can prevent churn by showcasing and recommending the right content to viewers, ensuring they keep returning to the service.
“On the other side, we can predict who is likely to churn and help operators understand why so they can take appropriate actions. We’ve got a lot of valuable data on audience behaviour and content intelligence, and use that as input into AI/ML processes to predict churn.”
According to Docherty, the company can then determine why any particular viewer is likely to churn. This allows service providers to make changes to prevent future subscriber loss. The company says its customers typically see viewing time per subscriber increase by up to 60%, and the number of channels watched increasing up to 35%.
Docherty argues that in a cost-of-living crisis it is more important than ever to engage viewers through content discovery and effective recommendations. He remarks: “All the operators are under pressure – whether from the cost-of-living crisis or just in general. Pay TV operators want to minimise churn and stop people bleeding over to OTT services. With SVOD type platforms someone can unsubscribe at a touch of a button and a month later they’re not there anymore. SVOD services need to demonstrate value for money to subscribers just as much Pay TV operators do.”
In the case of AVOD services, he emphasises that its vital to engage viewers immediately because users may access the service to watch one show they have heard about, and then never return if they are not presented additional content they might also be interested in.
AVOD service providers can also ‘hyper-target’ audience segments for advertising through Think360.
He elaborates: “We take our data and then – through ML processes – automatically segment your viewers into 160 IAB audience segments. That allows you to hyper-target ads campaigns and offer those audiences to advertisers.”
Docherty also spoke about the A/B testing features of Think360 and ThinkAnalytics’ recent collaboration with 3SS, a software provider for STBs and multiscreen entertainment. The collaboration will allow operators to conduct rapid A/B testing of any aspect of their service’s UX “using real-time granular data capture for ultra-personalised viewer experiences”.
“Companies which are data driven are the ones that are going to succeed because they’re looking at what is working and what is not working in the real world, and really listening to their viewers while acting on it quickly.”
He believes a significant benefit of conducting A/B testing through Think360 is that service providers can improve user experience without large infrastructure changes, firmware changes or a dedicated IT project. He says: “From a webpage console you can construct an A/B test in five minutes, publish it and then have all the insights and analytics to measure the outcomes.”
