Keeping audiences engaged through the adoption of cloud
Cloud has been dubbed as one of the technologies that has the capability to shape the future of the broadcast and media industry. Stéphane Le Dreau, SVP and general manager, Asia-Pacific, at Nagra, shares with APB what this scalable and flexible technology has to offer in areas such as content personalisation and customisation
How can cloud solutions be deployed to fuel media applications across the broadcast chain?
Stéphane Le Dreau: Broadcasters are using cloud-enabled services to reach consumers and engage with them in new ways — positioning the cloud in an increasingly pivotal role in the delivery of content-rich services to multiple devices, whether on an ad-driven or subscription basis.
Cloud-based systems help broadcasters provide scalable on-demand services, personalised content recommendations, deliver more relevant advertising, and understand the full value of their content portfolio through usage analytics.
One key application of the cloud is to enable broadcasters to better leverage the growing volume of customer data. Advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) are an important area for investment and development, presenting opportunities to improve operations and deliver efficiencies across pay-TV businesses. Service providers can also leverage data insight to more easily automate and improve customer service, and optimise their overall business operations.
How can cloud help keep today’s audiences engaged?
Le Dreau: TV audiences are more diverse and more demanding than ever before, as described in the TV Tribes research paper we commissioned from Ampere Analysis. The new TV and video market, especially across Asia-Pacific, is made up of multiple consumer segments with very different consumption patterns. The proliferation of connected devices and growing consumer appetite for on-demand services call for more flexible business models and systems to better engage with viewers in an increasingly fragmented environment.
Cloud technology enables broadcasters to respond to such market challenges with far more flexibility and responsiveness. For example, providing smart, on-demand TV services on any screen, enabling the delivery of TV services to any device, at home and on-the-go, and thereby reducing traditional CPE investments, or proposing more flexible over-the-top (OTT) business models — including skinny bundles, subscription video-on-demand (SVoD) packages, PPV — with lower customer acquisition costs.
It also allows broadcasters to quickly broaden their market footprint with OTT and multi-screen offerings while taking advantage of elastic, efficient and scalable cloud, as well as IP and data infrastructure, to lower operating costs, and achieve innovative services and more agile systems.
At NAGRA, we have now evolved all our product lines to be cloud-ready — user experience, content value protection, data analytics and AI — enabling our customers to leverage the public or private cloud, and be able to capture new market growth opportunities.
