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NEWSCASTSTUDIO.COM
By NIKKI PERUGINI
UX and Design Director, Accedo
The video industry has had a difficult
time of it over the last few years. We’ve
seen continued hard churn as consum-
ers tightened their belts, which naturally
led to providers focusing on cost cutting
over growth. It seems that the industry
may now be turning a corner, however
video service success moving forward
will depend on providers pulling out all
the stops to engage users and prevent
churn. And as any provider worth its salt
knows, this means continually improving
user experience and enhancing personal-
ization. After all, a happy, engaged user is
more likely to watch for longer and stick
around.
However,
effective
personaliza-
tion is difficult to get right and can be
both time-consuming and costly. Huge
amounts of data need to be analyzed to
determine what shows and movies the
viewer will enjoy the most, and what
works best to engage the user and get
them to press play. AI, with its ability to
quickly analyze enormous datasets and
make data-driven decisions, is the ideal
tool to support personalization. Conse-
quently, it’s hardly surprising that vid-
eo services, certainly the big streamers
anyway, are already using AI to analyze
users’ viewing habits and other relevant
data, and have been for some time. Global
players like Netflix have been using Ma-
chine Learning tools for years to provide
relevant recommendations and even per-
sonalise thumbnails based on user pref-
erences. AI provides the next step in ad-
vancing these types of features.
Why personalization matters
Streaming services typically have a
massive catalogue of available content,
which makes it difficult for viewers to find
the content they want to watch quickly.
And if users can’t quickly find something
to watch, the likelihood is that before
long, they’ll get bored with searching and
promptly switch off. I’m sure we’ve all
been there and done that with one service
or another. When done well,
personalization saves view-
ers lots of time and effort, and
improves the overall viewing
experience
tremendously.
Instead of endlessly search-
ing through a huge catalogue
of content to find something
that appeals, viewers are of-
fered a tailored collection of
shows and movies that close-
ly matches their unique tastes
and preferences.
And of course, it’s not just
content recommendations that can be per-
sonalized. The home page layout is also
a key part of personalization, designed to
improve the user experience by making
content discovery seamless and engaging.
Personalizing the layout means that each
user sees an interface tailored to their pref-
erences, behaviors, and viewing habits, en-
hancing both convenience and satisfaction.
This can be achieved by understanding
which rails a user prefers to interact with
and giving them higher promi-
nence on the home page, or fea-
turing their favourite content in
the hero.
Effective personalization in-
creases engagement so that
viewers watch for longer and
keep coming back for more.
It’s also a great tool to promote
new and existing content and
aid discovery, because it can
encourage users to explore
new genres that they may oth-
erwise not consider, as well as
uncover hidden treasures, and expand the
scope of their viewing.
Understanding nuances around
personalization
Engaging viewers and keeping them en-
gaged is an art form and personalization is
the key to success. Successful video pro-
viders collect huge amounts of data about
Continued on next page
Leveraging AI for faster and
more effective personalization
CONTENT PERSONALIZATION
PERUGINI
Effective personalization challenging to get
right thanks to huge amount of data needed