10-fold rise in data fuels C4 rethink

channel4_uscity_ident2006Channel 4 has witnessed a 10-fold growth in data, and is using the scalability of cloud computing to gain better insight into customer viewing and consumption habits.
The broadcaster has been on a mission to get closer to audiences – and boost its advertising revenues – since implementing a major CRM programme on the back of chief executive David Abraham’s pledge to concentrate on data.
It launched its 4oD on-demand service in 2006, and last year came good on a promise to exploit its customer data, by offering brand owners the chance to target online viewers with marketing messages tailored to their behaviour, age, gender and location.
As user numbers have grown the broadcaster has had to contend with masses of customer data, including web logs and app logs which provide feedback such as who visited, how long they stayed and what they watched.
Channel 4 chief technology officer Bob Harris said: “Everything we own generates an amount of data, and as you move towards consumption of media and video on demand on mobile devices, it means you will have data about what people are doing coming from more and more devices.”
In order to gain more value from the data being collated, the company is now storing and processing data in the Amazon Web Services’ cloud. This has enabled the broadcaster to crunch data that would previously have been deleted due to the cost of investing in physical hardware.
“We are now into a situation where we are crunching and analysing well over 10 times the data compared to two years ago, and heading towards two orders of magnitude of volume,” said Harris.
“Largely what we are doing is about audience segmentation, taking each viewer and realising that this is perhaps a person who turns up and always looks at comedy, against a person who always looks at news or current affairs programmes.”

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2 Comments on "10-fold rise in data fuels C4 rethink"

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