TELEVISION viewers in the Middle East and India are utilizing Scottish information expertise to assist them discover content material on streaming companies like Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video after two main contract wins for a Glasgow-based firm.
ThinkAnalytics stated properties throughout 20 international locations in the Middle East, together with Egypt, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, would now be utilizing its expertise.
The firm’s content material discovery and viewer analytics platform is powered by synthetic intelligence and is at present utilized by nearly 400 million TV viewers globally.
Subscribers to TV streaming companies with OSN, the primary pay-TV community throughout the Middle East and North Africa, will use ThinkAnalytics’ platform, Think360, to assist them discover and suggest TV exhibits.
OSN is headquartered in Dubai and distributes films, TV exhibits and sports activities from main studios and networks together with Disney, HBO, NBC Universal, Fox, Paramount, MGM, and Sony.
“Part of our enterprise is knowing the content material in all of the international locations we function in and understanding the viewers throughout the units they watch content material on,” stated ThinkAnalytics founder and chief expertise officer Peter Docherty. “In the Middle East, Arabic is clearly vital, so that is giving viewers a personalised expertise in 20 totally different international locations. From begin to end, we have been reside in lower than eight weeks on this deployment.”
In India, ThinkAnalytics has a big scale deal that can give subscribers of Tata Sky, certainly one of India’s prime pay TV and streaming suppliers, personalised content material discovery throughout 11 streaming companies, together with Amazon Prime Video and the Indian Disney+ model, Hotstar Premium.
This is thought in the TV trade as aggregation or super-aggregation, and is about saving customers the headache of in search of one thing to observe throughout a number of networks and content material suppliers.
“Typically, viewers who’re subscribed to a number of TV companies may need to launch two, three, 4 or 5 apps individually to seek out one thing to observe,” Mr Docherty stated. “Then it’s about attempting to recollect the place that present was that you simply favored and which app it’s on. Aggregation or super-aggregation is principally having one place the place a number of streaming companies are mixed right into a single expertise.”
ThinkAnalytics’ expertise combines machine studying algorithms and synthetic intelligence to know viewer behaviour and tag content material on a granular degree, together with the totally different parts of a plot, narrative kinds, codecs and moods. This boosts viewer engagement and loyalty, the corporate says, as a result of it helps viewers discover content material they need to watch, and additionally uncover content material they could in any other case have missed.
ThinkAnalytics was based in 2001 and began specialising in media and leisure in 2005.
“When we initially began, we have been working throughout numerous totally different industries doing actual time information mining, which is now referred to as machine studying and synthetic intelligence,” Mr Docherty defined. “Then in 2005, we moved into personalised content material discovery, search and suggestions. And we have actually targeted on this ever since.”
The firm now describes itself as “essentially the most deployed personalised content material discovery platform worldwide,” behind solely Netflix and Amazon Prime in subscriber numbers.
“We assist 43 languages and have prospects in 38 international locations world wide, together with Europe, the Middle East, North America, South America, Asia, Singapore and Malaysia,” Mr Docherty stated. “So we’re increasing the territories we cowl.”
Mr Docherty stated the corporate, which employs about 100 workers, was at present recruiting software program builders, info scientists and information scientists.
“There’s a number of nice expertise in Scotland and prime quality graduates popping out, not simply in pc science however in different associated disciplines,” he stated. “So it’s not simply firms from Silicon Valley that may do that.”
ThinkAnalytics has workplaces in Los Angeles, Singapore, London and Pune, India, in addition to Glasgow. Other new developments for the corporate embody launching a service that permits TV firms to ship focused promoting.
