Video streaming platforms want to know you better

Video streaming platforms are enhancing their personalisation algorithms to keep viewers hooked, including with bespoke home pages, not just to get users to subscribe and discover more content but also to target ads relevant to them.

- Lata Jha

NEW DELHI:

Platform executives say people who visit a service even once a year or for marquee titles leave clues about themselves, such as IP address and language preferences that can be used to train the algorithm to surface personalised content.

"Driving engagement and improving watch time on the platform is every platform's goal and priority," said Phanimoham Kalagara, chief technology officer, Gracenote, the content data business unit of market research firm Nielsen.

"In an era where content abundance is skyrocketing—with over 582,000 shows and movies now available across leading SVoD (subscription video-on-demand) platforms—personalization has become a critical differentiator for viewer retention and subscription renewal," he said.

The difficulty in navigating a vast content landscape is directly impacting user satisfaction and churn. Studies show that 48% of subscribers have cancelled a service because they couldn't find something to watch, Kalagara said.