Italian IPTV software specialist Neptuny used the IPTV World Forum in London to launch a recommendation service for smaller IPTV operators. It is based on its existing ContentWise recommendations engine, but offered as what it calls Software as a Service (SaaS), so hosted with no need to buy equipment. The system will also work with web TV portals as well as IPTV suppliers.
The company points to poor customer retention in some IPTV operations caused by user frustration in finding the right content. The SaaS edition of ContentWise has extra strong authentication and security, to protect the provider’s data and Neptuny will manage all software maintenance and upgrades as part of the service.
ContentWise collects information from two different sources to provide recommendations. Firstly the system takes information from all users and recommends items based on ratings from other users who have similar tastes, using what it calls Collaborative Filtering. The user can either rate a film after watching it or the system will collect information about whether the user watched the whole film or stopped it before it was finished. This will then be used to recommend content to other users who have similar taste as well as helping the operator decide what content to buy.
Secondly the system applies Content-based Filtering based on the content meta-data tracking the same actors, directors and producers. This is then put through a proprietary algorithm to come up with weighted recommendations for that user based on his preferences. The recommendations can come for broadcast material or VoD or nVoD material.
The operator can also add business rules to this, so that they promote certain content to maximize revenue. The operator can base recommendations on the individual and multiple individuals in a household.