LAS VEGAS – How can traditional television broadcasters survive in a world of digital disrupters like Amazon, Apple and Google? By using data to drive user engagement, in the process adopting more of a direct-to-consumer than business-to-business model.
This is easier said than done in a world marked by the proliferation of skinny programming bundles and rampant cannibalization. The capital demands of investing in infrastructure and platforms can be a dizzying maze for established broadcasters to navigate while trying to cling to their audiences and generate new ones.
Seeking to be the tour guide for this trip is Accenture, which just weighed in with its annual road map called Bringing TV To Life, which provides strategies for both traditional video content distributors such as TV networks and programmers, as well as content aggregators such as pay TV operators.
“The interesting thing about a broadcaster is that they are a B to B business generally but at the same time they have B to C capabilities,” Sef Tuma, who is MD & Global Lead at Accenture Digital Video and the author of Bringing TV To Life, says in this interview with Beet.TV at the annual NAB Show.
“In their old world it was very broadcast capabilities. The fact is they don’t have any of the CRM, one-to-one or any sort of relationship-based capabilities in their operating model,” Tuma says.
The delicate balancing act is one of retaining and growing the value of each of household while investing in generating engagement and, most important, reach. “Because reach is really what their competitors care about, whether that’s Google or Facebook. They care reach that’s unbounded by infrastructure,” he adds.
Tuma cites as one example BBC, an Accenture client that “took power of all of their digital capabilities and put a personalization platform under it to be able to start creating new ways of having conversations with the audience.”
Broadcasters need to understand their audiences not solely for the traditional purposes of advertising, but to inform decisions about content investment and “be able to find their most valuable audience.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the 2017 NAB Show in Las Vegas. The series is sponsored by Ooyala. For more coverage of NAB, please visit this page.
