Artificial Intelligence in Practice

30Viacom: Using Artificial Intelligence To Stream Videos Faster And Improve Customer Experience

Viacom is a vast media network, which as well as taking in household name brands such as Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and MTV, spans 400 YouTube channels, 60 Instagram pages, 430 Facebook pages and 100 Twitter handles.

It has invested heavily in real-time analytics across its networks, using artificial intelligence (AI) platforms to draw out insights that it can use to improve the customer experience.

What Problem Is Artificial Intelligence Helping To Solve?

With so many channels – taking in both TV brands and social media – data is plentiful regarding customer viewing habits, preferences and convenience. Making sense of all of that data can be tricky. A business like Viacom needs to understand how every variable, from Facebook posts “likes” to the time it takes to launch a streaming video, impacts on the amount of time viewers will spend with it.

It also has to ensure there is sufficient bandwidth availability to pump its content out to its customers around the world. Getting this wrong can lead to buffering and stutter during video playback – a factor that is very likely to get customers looking elsewhere for their entertainment.

Viacom's senior director of product analytics, Dan Morris, told me: “Delivery of video is at the core of everything we do, and our goal is to be exceptional at that.

“But there are a lot of variables at play – we have internal systems talking to external ...