These days the term “media” encompasses not only television, radio and print, but also phone calls, text messaging, social platforms and video chatting — any channel through which information and entertainment is disseminated. The byproduct, a massive trove of analyzable digital data, can be immensely helpful to companies that want to retain and grow their audiences by providing an enhanced media experience.
The following companies, and many others, are doing just that.
Media and Entertainment Companies Using Big Data
- DISH
- Amazon
- Hulu
- Netflix
- Spotify
- Apple
- Pandora
- X
Big Data in Media and Entertainment
Location: New York, New York
Ampersand is a digital advertising solution specializing in targeted TV ads. The company manages and analyzes large volumes of data to ensure effective targeting and campaign optimization. Ampersand works to equip advertisers with insights and solutions to help them make data-driven decisions that maximize the impact of their advertising campaigns.
Location: New York, New York
NBCUniversal is a titan of media and entertainment that captivates audiences with shows and movies distributed through an array of network television, film studio and streaming brands. Data plays an important role in NBCUniversal’s business strategy. The company leverages analytics tools to access user insights that inform decision making — an approach that’s led to increased viewership.
Location: Englewood, Colorado
DISH offers multichannel television and satellite television services through DISH Network and streaming options through Sling TV. The DISH Media division helps advertisers reach specific audiences across its platforms through targeted ad placements using viewer measurement tools, big data analysis and customized audience access. This approach allows advertisers to enhance the effectiveness of their national media campaigns with strategically positioned and demographically targeted advertisements.
Location: Seattle, Washington
Once just a means by which to get free and fast shipping, Amazon’s Prime subscription service now gives users access to thousands of streaming options. Amazon aggregates user viewing data to provide additional personalized recommendations. For example, watching a romantic comedy from the 1990s prompts the engine to display several similar options based on similar plot lines, release dates or director. Amazon also integrates a tool called X-Ray into its streaming platform. Using data from IMDB, the tool lets viewers see which actors are on-screen at any given time, as well as information like music titles and relevant trivia.
Location: Santa Monica, California
Hulu is a streaming service that provides access to a library of TV shows and movies, original content and current seasons of television series airing on stations like FOX, ABC and NBC. Accessible across devices, Hulu regularly adds content and recently expanded to offer a live TV service. Like other streaming platforms, Hulu uses an in-house recommendation engine that's based on user watching habits to offer content its viewers might like. Unlike other services, Hulu also allows viewers to “stop recommending” certain content. This provides even more information for Hulu’s engine, strengthening viewer habit and preference data while creating a more solid user experience.
Location: Los Gatos, California
Originally a pay-per-rental online DVD service, Netflix shifted to its current model in 2007 to become one of the original video content streaming services. It now provides a vast selection of titles ranging from complete television series to original movies. The service is well-known for releasing complete seasons at a time, encouraging the now popular practice of binge watching. When it comes to providing user recommendations, Netflix analyzes a variety of data points, including devices used, viewing duration, previous ratings, viewing history, habits of viewers with similar viewing histories and information about available titles. Netflix’s algorithm analyzes all of this information and provides viewers with personalized choices.
Location: New York (U.S. Headquarters)
Spotify is another music streaming service using listening data to curate personalized experiences for its users. Spotify has more 80 million users, which translates to a ton of listening data. So much data, in fact, that Spotify has a blog that displays the different ways data is understood on the platform. Transparent about how much data it has, Spotify uses that data for promotional purposes and its popular yearend data extravaganza “Wrapped,” through which users can learn how many minutes they listened on the platform and how much they loved Post Malone that year — even if they can’t admit it to themselves.
Location: Cupertino, California
Apple Music is Apple’s monthly music subscription service, providing more than 50 million songs to users around the world. In addition to its recent acquisition of AI and analytics company Asaii (which tracks top artists and trends), Apple also launched Apple Music for Artists, an analytics dashboard that helps artists understand how their music is performing on Apple Music and iTunes. Dashboard insights include the global locations of listeners, where those listeners are discovering certain music and stats like overall plays and purchases.
Location: Oakland, California
Pandora is a personalized music streaming service that offers curated playlists and listening stations based on user likes and dislikes. One of Pandora’s products, Thumbprint Radio, provides the most personalized experience music can offer. Using only data from user “thumbs ups,” the station creates hyper-personal playlists and recommendations. According to Pandora’s blog, Thumbprint Radio stations boast “23% higher listening session engagement than the top 500 stations average listening.”
Location: Menlo Park, California
Instagram is a social platform that connects users through photos and videos. Acquired by Facebook in 2012, the widely used site has upwards of one billion users. That means it also has mountains of data. Instagram offers many kinds of profiles, including business profiles that offer users data insights about things like the reach of individual posts, past post comparisons and the origins of audience impressions.
Location: Chicago, Illinois
Sprout Social makes social media management software that helps brands and companies reach audiences across social networks like Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Sprout’s technology lets companies use social data to track engagement and performance of multiple social channels at a granular level, which in turn spurs data-driven social strategy decisions. Sprout is used by companies and brands like BARK, Make-A-Wish and WeddingWire.
Location: San Francisco, California
X, formerly known as Twitter, is a social networking site that provides live news and commentary on virtually everything going on around the world. With more than 60 million active monthly users, its wide breadth of data has many applications. From understanding public health issues and monitoring the well-being of an urban population to offering insights about the NFL’s most-hated team, X’s data is used in many ways.
Location: Seattle, Washington
Getty Images offers a vast global portfolio of photos and videos for editorial and creative use. Its artificial intelligence tool for quickly generating images was trained using Getty’s extensive library of content and data. The technology relies solely on permissioned data to ensure users’ images are commercially safe.
Location: New York, New York
Optimum’s family of brands specialize in internet and mobile connectivity, local and international news gathering and adtech solutions. Optimum Media focuses on providing businesses with advertising tools and services, including data capabilities meant to fuel precision audience targeting.
Location: Los Angeles, California
Centerfield uses real time biddable media (or RTB,) customized scripting and automated call routing to develop intelligent sales technology and data-driven marketing. It combines its retention center, sales and its platform, Dugout, to provide new customers to leading brands throughout the world.
