Creating a Data-Driven Enterprise in Media

Chapter 6. The Changing Data Landscape for Media, and Next Steps Toward Becoming Data Driven

The market has dramatically changed for media companies in recent years. Everything now depends on data.

Media companies are finding they must discard all of their previous assumptions as they enter this new information-centric age. Their customers today consume media on a plethora of disparate devices. They access it from an array of different channels. And personalization is now critical to winning their hearts and minds. For all these reasons and more, media companies must become data-driven or they won’t survive.

By now, you’ve read about overall industry trends as well as the data-driven journeys of SlingTV, Turner Broadcasting, and Comcast. In this chapter, we go over the most significant industry changes that are driving these businesses’ new data-driven reality as well as provide a five-point checklist to help other media companies on their data-driven journeys.

Three Industry-Wide Changes Compelling Media Companies to Become Data Driven

Here are the three biggest changes that are transforming the media industry today:

• Changes in the ways content is delivered

• Proliferation of devices and connectivity leading to a data explosion

• Availability of highly scalable and cost-effective tools to manage it all

The Changing Pace and Face of Content Distribution

First, we are moving from linear (as in broadcast TV programming) to over-the-top delivery (OTT) models created by the ...