Navigating content analytics in the age of profitability

If you’re in the content business – be it in a trillion plus dollar tech giant, a Hollywood studio, or a telco operated platform – profitability could be guiding all your decisions across markets and corporations. 

Profitability, which is not very far off the discounted cash-flow valuations fuelled by cheap capital, is back in the forefront. 

Profitability is primarily driven by content strategy 

Simultaneously, content providers are also sailing into a TV landscape that is more competitive than ever before. The need for content executives to align content strategy, financing, and acquisition decisions to these new business prerogatives has become crucial. For most streamers and broadcasters, content creation and acquisition constitute most of their spendings. 

Content strategy requires data-driven insights 

The good news is that there is a wealth of data available that can help you gain a precise understanding of your customers and identify opportunities to manage costs and drive revenues. But this abundance of data can sometimes lead you off course if the information has no tangible impact on your content decisions.  

Keys to getting the content insights that drive profitability 

Here are three ways in which you can leverage your video consumption data to put the wind behind the sails of your content strategy and navigate your business to profitability.  

1. Understand the value of content to your customers 

While assets with the highest reach or engagement provide an aggregated view of what’s currently popular, it doesn’t necessarily tell you what the customers value most, or which assets are the most profitable. 

To understand this, you need to look at total viewership KPIs, in conjunction with the engagement of your viewer segments with those assets. An understanding of which viewer segments bring most revenues, and how content acquisition costs feed into the customer acquisition costs, is the key to making content investments that drive profitability. 

A niche channel dedicated to tennis or motorsports may never be the most viewed on your platform but may drive higher levels of engagement with high value customer segments making it an asset worth renewing. The good news is that the right insights can help you quantify this and re-chart the course. 

2. Optimise licensing of content rights 

Over the past couple of years, the nature of rights negotiations has gone through dramatic changes. Exclusivity and licensing windows are no longer industry standards, and everything is up for negotiation. While this may have rocked the boat for how you license content for your platform, tooled with the right insights it could be an opportunity to leverage viewership data and run a solid ship. 

Content analytics can guide key decisions by answering questions such as: What makes sense to do as an original vs licensing? When licensing, what window is appropriate for a given piece of content and what is the marginal return on licensing it for an additional month? 

If the window is shorter, content discovery plays a crucial role. You may have to consider how can your product design and UX teams help maximise eyeballs for a given asset in a shorter period? What segments of your customer base would this serve? What are the areas that are under-served? 

If it’s a multi-tiered offering, consider what content will work better behind a paywall. A granular grasp over your viewership can help you develop an efficient content strategy and maximise ROI for each asset. 

3. Mitigate churn by increasing content engagement 

It’s generally more expensive to acquire a new subscriber than to retain an existing one. Observing viewer behaviour on your platform through the right datapoints can allow you to anticipate user churn and take measures to smoothen up the hatches. The right insights can allow you to monitor a range of data points on viewer engagement with content to billing cycle data and proactively stem the tide. 

This, combined with a deeper understanding of the role that different assets play in customer acquisition and retention can equip you to maximise lifetime value of customers by having a marketing strategy focussed on customer retention.  

Content analytics allows you to let your customers inform your decisions on what they value most and formulate a data-driven content strategy, which allows you weigh up the licensing to ensure that each asset is working to drive ARPU and profitability for your video service.  

How Synamedia can help 

Get onboard with Synamedia Clarissa Content Insights to find out how you can inform decisions on what content your customers value most, formulate a licensing strategy that optimises ROI, and identify, address potential churn with proactive measures that increase engagement. Download this eGuide to learn more.