Creating a Data-Driven Enterprise in Media

Chapter 1. Data-Driven Disruption in the Media and Entertainment Industry: Trends, Challenges, and Opportunities

Until fairly recently, the media and entertainment industry’s struggle to reach target audiences could still be characterized by the proverbial John Wanamaker quote. “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted,” he said more than a century ago. “The trouble is, I don’t know which half.”

It had almost become the industry’s tagline.

But that is shifting—rapidly—because of big data and analytics. Media and entertainment companies have begun their data-driven journeys. For the first time, data is being used on a large scale to deliver the right content to the right people on the right platform at the right time.

A huge factor in this transformation is that media companies are focusing intently on consumers. Data is being used to personalize customers’ consumption experiences by getting the precisely right content to them when and where they want it, on whatever device they happen to be using at the time. Data is also being used to keep the network performing as required by customers—even the so-called “last mile,” which is the part of the network that actually delivers the content into consumers’ homes, and which can be beyond some media companies’ control. And, most important, data is key to transforming the way media companies measure the success of their efforts.

The latter is a truly revolutionary change. Media firms—which include traditional broadcast and cable ...