Over 75% of U.S. households now subscribe to streaming services. Good news for the OTT industry, but the proliferation of options and increasingly price-conscious consumers has driven up subscription cancellations at an alarming rate. If you’re a VOD provider, you already have the data you need to reverse the trend. Your next step is to leverage it correctly.
Predictive insights and prescriptive recommendations are key to winning over today’s noncommittal subscriber. Artificial intelligence is the only way to find those insights within the noisy, crowded data stores that every provider has access to. AI can analyze siloed data sources – like payment activity and CRM profiles – in real time, for a complete understanding of customer intent signals. An AI platform can also recommend offers and messages that will grab a customer’s attention.
Think about the difference between a generic email blast announcing this month’s new releases and a personalized offer that features the latest series starring a customer’s favorite actor, sent two days before they planned to cancel. For providers, the impact of AI-generated insight is incomparable.
Implementing AI can seem like a daunting task. But it’s not as daunting as the idea of falling behind the competition because your current data processes just can’t keep up with new and critical consumer engagement strategies. That’s why modern AI platforms are designed to be deployed faster than ever, and accessible to individuals outside the data science and engineering teams traditionally responsible for delivering such sophisticated analytics.
Some high-level thinking on the front end will have you well ahead of the competition. I’ve outlined important steps VOD providers should take in my article for this special edition issue for Rapid TV News.