Today we are taking a quick look into second element we consider to be important for an OTT platform – Personalization.
With the amount of content being offered through the average OTT platform it has become a real challenge to navigate through it all and chose something to watch. To offer better experience to the viewer really good OTT platforms create a personalized experience.
First factor in creating a really personalized experience is a proper recommendation engine. Recommendation engine will track viewer’s behavior when using the app and choosing content for consumption and based on the calculation suggest additional content that fits their profile. Recommendation engine can be built-into the app but more and more integrations with 3rd party solutions are used as well. The reason is the fact that recommendation solutions industry has become rather specialized with companies focusing only on this element. The best OTT platforms will offer you both options (built-in or integrated with 3rd party solution) just like AVIION HS5 OTT platform does. Which solution would work better for you? Give us a call and we will help you find out. Prerequisite for good recommendations is proper data analysis that we covered last week. Additionally, the quality of recommendation will be increased the more AI is included on the equation.
Along with the data collected with the usage of the app it is important that each individual asset has metadata included. The more detailed the metadata include, the finer distinction the engine will be able to make. Why is that important? Well, for example, if a certain movie is the romantic comedy starring Clint Eastwood then by showing 2 different movie posters, one where you are showing a romantic scene to an audience predominantly watching rom-com movies and the other showing Clint Eastwood to viewer’s that watched other movies with him starring you are making this movie appealing to viewers that probably have different movie tastes in general.
But, it is not all about the content. To offer truly personalized service the OTT platform needs to offer seamless experience across different platforms. The ability to create preferred live channel lists as well as “watch later” catalog for VODs is also important. If the recommendation engine did its job well the viewer will definitely want to mark content for consumption at a later time. If you add the ability to download encrypted content for offline viewing, then you can consider your platform to offer a rather personalized experience.
Another personalization factor is user profile within an account. Since most OTT services offer the option of concurrent use of several devices means that there are more people using the service meaning that they all have their own personal preferences. The app needs to enable the creation of user profiles that will create individual experience for each specific viewer. The more the experience is personalized the greater the chance the viewer will continue to use your streaming service.