ThinkAnalytics, the company that boasts the world’s most widely deployed recommendation engine, was flaunting its feathers at CES in Las Vegas last week, but not in the manner that the industry has become well accustomed to. It launched ThinkMarketing, a product extension that ties the entire ThinkBusiness ecosystem together – providing operators and OTT service providers with marketing-focused KPIs, aiming for an all-encompassing recommendations and personalization experience.
Faultline met with Rich Shiavanto at CES, SVP of Business Development at ThinkAnalytics, who told us that the company wants to evolve beyond a pure recommendation product line, and no longer wants to be labeled as such.
ThinkAnalytics’ ambitions to spread its wings beyond content recommendations looks set to further the gap between itself and its competitors. By expanding its product portfolio ThinkAnalytics can still pitch at new customers who may be reluctant to switch out their entire recommendation system, and the platform can sit right on top of any existing recommendation software.
ThinkMarketing is essentially an extension of the product it launched at last year’s CES show, ThinkBigData, a tool for multiple teams in a company, including marketing teams, to analyze performance data and take necessary actions. ThinkMarketing takes this to the next level – focusing on the ad space where marketing teams are aggressively selling and providing the relevant data and performance indicators, as well as offering tools for monetizing these data points – in the process reducing the time to market.
Shiavanto explained that ThinkAnalytics is delving into dynamic ad insertion (DAI), as it expands its business model to one with multiple revenue streams – something many of its competitors can’t cater for. ThinkMarketing provides personalization at the device level for accurate delivery of ads. Shiavanto gave the example that delivering ads longer than one minute to a mobile device does not make for an ideal user experience, and is the type of scenario ThinkMarketing aims to solve.
ThinkMarketing covers two bases; ThinkEditorial and ThinkConsole. ThinkEditorial throws up a UI for editorial teams to manage campaigns and lists, simply via search and drag and drop, to replace the legacy systems and outdated interfaces that many companies still rely on. It color codes assets to monitor performance, and can target audiences based on age, time of day, language and time zones. ThinkAnalytics gives the example that, “if the reaction to the latest James Bond promotion falls flat, it can quickly be replaced with the latest Disney movie.”
The next component, ThinkConsole, is the dashboard that can add changes to the end user’s UI based on A/B test results, allowing for the creation and modification of features such as editorial promotions, personalization and popular movies.
Rival recommendation engines, namely Jinni, ContentWise and XroadMedia, will no doubt be watching ThinkAnalytics’ moves closely, scratching their chins as to how they too can step up and show their marketing teeth.
Peter Docherty, ThinkAnalytics CTO, commented on the launch, “with many video service providers still running their editorial campaigns using Excel spreadsheets, we see a huge opportunity for businesses to benefit from an integrated platform that provides a 360-degree view of how campaigns impact viewer behavior and makes it easy for editorial teams to act on that insight. Technology has neglected the creative input of video and TV editorial teams for too long. We are now bringing the power of analytics into the marketing department.”