Traditional linear TV has lost its connect with the audience as viewers are more attracted towards Video on Demand (VoD) solutions such as YouTube, which is affecting revenues for TV providers. These on-demand platforms are able to provide a personalised viewing experience with suggestions, recommendations based on our viewing patterns, thus giving them a considerable edge over traditional TV.
But what if traditional TV too could be personalized based on what the viewer likes to watch? A Hyderabad-Netherlands-based startup claims to have found a way to take television to the next level by making it customer driven.
Founded in 2016 by Phani Kanth Vooka and Wouter Schreur, TV2Z offers software and services that help Internet Protocol TV (IPTV) and Over The Top (OTT) providers give viewers a customer-driven experience by tracking user-viewing data. It then helps better the customer’s viewing experience by giving them personalized recommendations and ads.
Wouter Schreur and Phani Kanth Vooka
“TV2Z comes as a rescue for TV providers to stay ahead of their VoD competitors by tracking the user viewership data and providing personalized recommended libraries and things like hot lists to users, so that people get to watch what they like instead of zapping across all the live TV channels to find the best programme,” Phani says.
TV2Z tracks all viewing data live and provides real time and deep insight reports of viewing behavior.
It has three different services viz. TV2Z Waves, Roots and Sparks. With TV2Z waves, consumer viewing behaviour is collected and presented in real time. This is used to make data-driven decisions based on customer behaviour insights to create or select new content. With the help of the data collected, TV2Z can make predictions about consumer viewing behaviour. It also provides insights into churn ratios and can predict customer migrations.
Roots is TV2Z’s recommendation engine, which provides smart machine learning algorithms. They make appropriate recommendations to the viewer based on the gathered data. “The TV2Z Recommendation Engine makes sure the viewer never has to struggle with unfriendly user interfaces when looking for a show,” Phani adds.
And based on the data collected, Sparks is a service which creates an anonymous profile of each individual viewer, which makes it possible to target TV advertising campaigns as accurately as possible. TV2Z’s Ad Insertion also allows you to show each viewer different advertisements, so the advertiser’s marketing budget can be deployed as efficiently as possible.
The OTT players that TV2Z is targeting are the apps that television channels such as Star Plus, Hungama TV, Sun TV launch for their viewers, to catch up on shows and watch other content. “Since people are slowly moving away from television, our aim is to make that more customer driven,” Phani adds.
IPTV, which is television delivered over the internet is still nascent in India. Here it tracks what users watch on TV, based on which it provides analytics to the network provider for new shows or to develop relevant content. To end users, it gives them recommendation on the television interface, letting them know what shows they may like, programs that are trending and even gives them suggestions on programs likely to be of interest that are going be aired in the next few hours.
For this, it has customers in Netherlands and Canada. Phani says that there is no feedback path in India currently. But providers here are slowly moving towards IPTV and OTT platforms.
“The insights based on TV2Z data help advertisers and content providers optimise strategy and utilise the available media budgets. This helps create a more positive relation with the viewer by providing recommendations and gives new revenue streams for the TV provider,” adds Phani.
It is offering the service as a SAAS model or as partnership based on revenue sharing. It is currently working with two OTT vendors and one IPTV provider. And while it has customers in Netherlands and Canada, its focus going forward is on India. It plans to set up more agencies to further grow the business.
“Our long-term goal is to change the way TV is offered, making TV personalised and providing real time view ratings and ad insertions,” Phani says.