In the Netflix era, the entire media industry has been disrupted by data insights. Curated content, custom recommendations, and targeted ads define television consumption models today, and AMC Networks Inc. is beefing up its own investments in analytics in an effort to successfully navigate its own digital transformation.

“In order to be able to deliver that premium [data] … we have to have state-of-the-art data management platforms,” said Vitaly Tsivin (pictured), executive vice president of business intelligence at AMC. The popular cable TV brand that includes AMC, BBC America, IFC and Sundance TV channels has a wealth of data at its disposal, and is putting it to work to empower employees across the board. 

“We have to curate our own first-party data. We have to acquire meaningful third-party data. We have to mingle it all together. We have to employ optimization predictive algorithms on top of that. We have to employ statistics and arm business with data-driven decisions,” said Tsivin.

Tsivin spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and John Walls (@JohnWalls21), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the IBM Signature Moment — Machine Learning Everywhere event in New York. They discussed the strategy behind AMC’s digital transformation and avenues for continued growth as a data-driven network. (* Disclosure below.)

Enabling data-driven decisions across the whole company

Beyond deploying the right infrastructure to ensure data collection tools are in place, Tsivin explained that providing all employees with access to the data is critical. Making a complete cultural shift toward being a data-driven company requires data democratization.

“That’s actually not only getting the right data sources, not only processing them correctly, but actually arming everyone in the company with immediate, easy access to this data. Because the entire business, data business, is all about insights,” Tsivin said. 

Data democratization doesn’t require all employees to be trained in statistical models and machine learning, though. Simply providing easy access to dashboards and analytics empowers individual employees with better day-to-day decisions which collectively move the bottom line, according to Tsivin.

“If you arm them with that data at the tip of their fingers, they’ll make many better decisions on a daily basis, which means that they’re actually coming up with their own small insights,” he said. 

As the broadcasting industry continues to evolve into streaming and on-demand services, networks are forced to react with business models catered to the consumption patterns of their users. AMC is hard-pressed by its competitors to provide the same freedom of choice in viewing platforms and content availability.  

“We’re broadcasting, they’re watching, which means that we understand how they watch, and we try to react accordingly to that,” Tsivin said. 

The direct-to-consumer strategy requires highly personalized content and recommendations for specific groups of viewers. This is highly relevant for machine learning-based advertising that helps generate new content to targeted demographics and maintain high viewer retention rates.

“The major portion of our marketing campaigns falls on our own air. So, we promote our shows to our AMC viewers or TV viewers. When we do that, we try to optimize our campaigns to the highest level possible to get the most … [return on investment] out of that,” Tsivin explained.

As Tsivin’s organization expands access to data, the amount of effort required to deliver larger business insights increases as objectives become more ambitions. Analyzing aspects of a production to predict its success is an area of analytics that is still yet to be explored.

“The more complex data and objectives we set in front of ourselves, the more educated people in the company become, the more challenging it is to deliver and take the next step,” Tsivin concluded. 

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the IBM Signature Moment — IBM Machine Learning Everywhere event.
(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the IBM Signature Moment — Machine Learning Everywhere event. Neither IBM, the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE