Press Kit Reduced - RSG Media can now help managers project content-related profits and make decisions that opti- ... • Yield Optimization and Big Data ... Press Kit Reduced

PRESS KIT“The creation continues incessantly

through the media of man.- Antoni Gaudi

MEDIA

RSG Media Press 2015-2017 Press Kit450 Lexington Ave., 4th Floor NY, NY 10017

We’ve Moved

New York, NY (October 2016) – RSG Media Systems, LLC (RSG Media) recently announced plans to move its corporate office to a state-of-the-art, centrally based location in the heart of midtown Manhattan. The new office will be approximately a quarter of a mile from its current location, also in midtown Manhattan.

"Our goal in finding the new RSG Media home was to find a space which would be collaborative. The new space lends to the culture and optimizes that goal in a convenient midtown location," said Chief Executive Officer, Mukesh Sehgal.

For RSG Media, a technology firm servicing the media and entertainment industry, the new office space means an inspired work environment for creative thought leadership, improved client service, new amenities for employees, and technological advances in the work space.

“We were encouraged to find such a hip and technology friendly space so close to our current office. We sought out to limit the impact that relocation would have on both our clients and our team members. I think we did just that. This location and augmented operational efficiencies will help us continue to grow in the ever evolving media and entertainment technology industry,” said Matt Klepac, VP, Marketing.

RSG Media will move in mid-November, at which time RSG Media’s new address will be:

450 Lexington Ave. Floor 4 New York, NY 10017

Contact [email protected] with inquiries450 Lexington Ave., 4th Floor NY, NY 10017

Product Launch

Product Launch at NAB 2016: New Promo System Stuns; RSG Media Launches Media Mantra, Data-Science Driven Promo Manager

NEW YORK, NY (April 18, 2016) – Major cable networks are reaping larger, more engaged audienc-es, and are doing it using fewer, more highly targeted spots, with RSG Media’s promo-planning & management system, Media Mantra. The results have been immediate.

With year over year declines in reach across the linear landscape, the pressure on inventory avail-ability for marketing campaigns has increased tremendously. This has led to a demand for even more super-efficient campaign planning than ever before. Existing planning tools used in the indus-try have been reliant on decades old technique of reach and frequency curves. With improved respondent level data available, almost overnight, RSG Media has developed the solution.

Created exclusively for Programmers and Marketing & Research teams, Media Mantra uses data science behavioral based targeting and machine-learning algorithms to make promos significantly more effective. It identifies which viewers can be converted and how best to reach them. Then, it sniper-targets them where they watch: in network, on sister-networks, and off-network.

Media Mantra’s machine-learning algorithms determine the best point on the reach and frequency curve to deliver the following key metrics:

• Conversion Efficacy: Measuring the effectiveness of promotion campaigns.• Placement Efficacy: Determining which shows and times are most effective to promote a

specific show to a target viewer-ship.• Dynamic Campaign Tracking: Daily tracking of campaigns provides the ability to make

adjustments on the fly to ensure goals are made.• Cross-Channel Promotion Planning: Extending calculations to take full advantage of a

multi-network programmer’s entire inventory of content.• Off Network Promotion Planning: Calculating the costs and benefits of promoting programs off

network.

Notes John Curran, Director of Media Analytics at RSG Media, “Unlike traditional systems, only Media Mantra provides marketing teams unique insights and intelligence by discerning the best use of limited promo time and budget to meet campaign goals.”


Product Launch

NEW YORK, NY (September 11, 2015) – Electronic Sell Through (EST) is growing by leaps and bounds. Customers have demonstrated that they are eager to buy content during the early-release EST window, rather than waiting 4-6 weeks until they can rent the title. In the US, according to figures published by the Digital Entertainment Group, EST is up 30.4%.

One hurdle that video service operators and MVPDs face is that launching EST brings administrative headaches, with increased volumes of data and a much greater frequency of updates. The good news is that RightsLogic's new VOD Offer Management makes EST easy and highly automated.

EST is complex. There is a constant flow of new titles, updates to the license period, price changes, take-down notices, and myriad other details, all based on shifting conditions. RightsLogic lets EST providers handle this flood of information. It automatically ingests the critical deal points and updates, tying everything back to the contract. It ensures that the CMS is up to date with the latest in-window titles and offers. This means that customers get access to titles as soon as they are available. It also ensures operator compliance.

RightsLogic's newest VOD Offer Management functionality gives operators the tools to easily re-price and re-offer content, giving them the merchandising flexibility they need to maximize reach and revenues. It also takes advantage of RSG Media’s deep expertise in data analytics and optimi-zation, using VOD sales and scheduling data to identify uplift opportunities that providers can use to generate substantial new VOD revenues. With RightsLogic they can dynamically adjust pricing throughout a title’s lifetime on their platform, depending on demand and how the content is perform-ing.

Notes Mukesh Sehgal, RSG Media President & CEO, "Without RightsLogic, EST providers are stuck trying to manage hundreds, if not thousands, of updates that need to flow through into their CMS. With RightsLogic, they can focus on bringing their audience the finest shows, while maximizing shareholder value. It's a win-win."

RSG Media will be using its platform at IBC 2015 to launch this innovative functionality. Demos are available in booth H04 in hall 14.


NEW YORK, NY (August 28, 2015) – RSG Media System’s David Hoffman, Vice President of Busi-ness Development and Dan Cox, Vice President, will be speaking at this year’s IBC conference in the Content Everywhere Europe Hub, in Amsterdam this September. The hub hosts a program of free sessions and product demonstrations, which explore products that are shaping the develop-ment of new technologies in broadcast media. IBC is packed with media industry tastemakers, cable and broadcast executives, digital media and technology companies, content aggregators, and many other thought leaders in the content space. Hoffman and Cox join an array of other media executives including speakers and panelists from Deutsche Telekom, Cognizant, ITV, IBM, and Sony.

RSG Media’s session: How the Most Profitable Media Companies Use Best Practices in Rights Management to Earn More from Content Everywhere, will take place on Saturday, September 12 at 14:00 (2 pm ET).

Cox and Hoffman will touch on how all media companies spend upwards of 40% of their total outlay on content rights. Yet, a few select companies earn a disproportionate return on their investment. In this presentation, RSG Media will give an insider's look at the art, science, and best practices that "move the needle" for every facet of the industry, from programming to distribution and sales, to consumer products licensing. “Media companies spend billions each year acquiring or producing content, yet our research indicates many could be earning up to 10% more from their content rights. For a company that invests $3 billion per year, that’s $30 million in untapped revenue. When you think about it this way, it’s clear that having a little edge really goes a long way“, says Hoffman.

IBC will take place from September 11-15 at the Amsterdam RAI. For more information on the ses-sion or to schedule a demo today, please email [email protected].

Visit RSG Media in Hall 14, Stand H04.


NEW YORK, NY (August 10, 2015) – The digital revolution is creating massive headaches for media companies regarding talent payments, royalties, and residuals. Huge volumes of increasingly com-plex deals, each with different payment terms, span every conceivable platform. And, it’s getting worse every day.

It’s gotten to the point where it is no longer humanly possible, even for a medium-sized media com-pany, to ensure timely and accurate payments and compliance with all contractual terms. The good news is that now media companies can use RightsLogic Distribution Finance to manage these tasks automatically, and they will be showcasing this technology at IBC 2015.

By integrating financial accounting features with RightsLogic’s industry leading business rights management, program planning & scheduling, consumer products licensing, and reporting modules, RightsLogic can now help managers project content-related profits and make decisions that opti-mize their company’s bottom line.

Combined with the power of RightsLogic’s industry leading Cross Platform Reporting system, which ingests information from all linear, on demand, and digital platforms automatically, RightsLogic can now track usage and calculate receivables and payments. And, it helps ensure SOX and other regu-latory compliance, which makes audits and month end close a breeze for Finance teams. Most importantly, it ensures that different business silos share the right information seamlessly.

There are many consumers of financial information, from the obvious (Executives, Finance, Business & Legal Affairs, and Sales) to the less obvious, such as Programming who strives to ensure that every airing or play is profitable.

RightsLogic presents usage, viewership, revenues, royalties, and payments in a clear way that lets managers make data-informed decisions. It lets distribution groups evaluate the cost effectiveness of both linear and digital TV, home video, program sales, and merchandising & sponsorship deals.

“With RightsLogic, our clients now understand revenue, royalties, and residuals by program, talent, and media type, all at a glance,” noted Mukesh Sehgal, CEO. “Not only do they get more accurate financial reporting, they also make more timely payments to talent, which is huge in today’s talent-driven industry.

Product Showcase


NEW YORK, NY (June 9, 2015) – RSG Media has signed a deal with the National Hockey League (NHL®) to implement RightsLogic, a rights management system which the NHL will use to manage the contractual rights and financials for its consumer products licensing business.

“We were looking for a licensing system which would not only manage the contractual and financial processes, but would also provide flexible analytical and reporting tools,” said Craig Harnett, NHL Chief Financial Officer. “After evaluating several options we chose RSG Media’s RightsLogic because it has the capabilities we need and a knowledgeable team supporting it.”

RSG Media’s CEO Mukesh Sehgal had only praise for the NHL. “Even though we have been work-ing with the media and entertainment industry for 30 years, we are constantly learning from our customers,” said Sehgal. “The NHL brought some great forward thinking ideas to the table which we were eager to incorporate into our product.”

About RSG Media Systems, LLC.

Founded in 1985, RSG Media Systems works with the world’s largest media companies to provide strategic insights, analytics, managed services, and proprietary software solutions that significantly improve revenues and operations. RSG Media’s products and services span three critical areas:

• Business Rights Management for Content & Consumer Products Licensingo RSG Media’s RightsLogic® system is the foremost system for managing and reporting on

content rights, royalties, obligations, finances, and opportunities.• Ad Sales Planning and Deal Management for linear, on demand, and digital properties• Yield Optimization and Big Data Analytics: RSG uses advanced mathematics and data analyt

ics to extract tens of millions of extra value out of advertising and content inventory. Cross Platform Reporting unifies usage, revenue, and royalties processing across all platforms: linear, digital, on-demand, and mobile.

• Managed Services: RSG provides economies of skill and scale in content management, yield optimization, big data, and ad sales planning.

NHL and the NHL Shield are registered trademarks of the National Hockey League. All Rights Reserved.

New Client


NEW YORK, NY (April 13, 2015) – Today, RSG Media announced its Cross Platform, Big Data Solu-tions based on IBM Bluemix for Media & Entertainment companies at the National Association of Broadcasters Show in Las Vegas. The new solutions will deliver unique performance insights to cable and broadcast networks.

RSG Media is one of the industry’s first software providers to leverage IBM’s digital innovation plat-form for IBM Cloud for performance analytics on networks’ media use. The transition to Bluemix allows for the mass collection and analysis of structured and unstructured data sets from all linear, on demand and digital media platforms. This includes networks’ revenues & costs, content rights, programming schedules, promotional placements, advertisements, social media activity, and a plethora of other industry data sources including EIDR (Entertainment Identifier Registry), Nielsen and SNL Kagan to name a few. This has enabled networks to optimize media planning and return on investment from all platforms including their use of programming, promos, and advertising.

The open standards platform for IBM Cloud is used to rapidly build, deploy and manage cognitive applications and services. It is a key milestone in IBM’s shift towards data-driven products. IBM has invested over $24 billion to date in big data and analytics. And in the last two years has acquired SoftLayer, a hosting and cloud computing provider, and Cloudant, a NoSQL database-as-a-service company to reinforce its cloud portfolio.

At the core of the Bluemix platform are three essential components that enable RSG Media to aggregate and analyze big data sets; Dataworks, dashDB and Cloudant. Dataworks is a set of cloud-based data refinery services that shapes, cleanses, matches and secures cloud-based and on premise data. dashDB is a cloud-based data warehousing and analytics service. Cloudant is a NoSQL database-as-a-service that enables applications to scale and remain available over global cloud-based data delivery networks.

Mukesh Sehgal, President and CEO of RSG Media, remarked, “The tremendous growth of data is redefining today’s competitive advantage. With IBM Cloud, we can leverage a modern and complete cloud-based data analytics portfolio, which allows us to accelerate our delivery of products and services for analytically savvy media companies. With less time and money spent on IT pains, we can direct our focus on our strategic imperative to provide innovate ways to maximize revenues for media companies’ content and advertising inventories.”

Data Driven


NEW YORK, NY (March 31, 2015) – RSG Media, creator of the dominant media business rights management system, RightsLogic® and Prime Focus Technologies, creators of the world’s first Media ERP Suite, CLEARTM today announced a technology partnership integrating their flagship products. The joint solution will simplify and streamline the efforts of content owners by automating the digital supply chain and maximizing monetization of their content.

As content programmers seek to grow their digital revenues by taking advantage of the increasing number of new platforms available to them, they are faced with a time consuming and expensive process, filled with an ever changing variety of requirements, formats and standards. Combining the benefits of RightsLogic and CLEAR, guarantees seamless digitization of the entire content supply chain, but more importantly, it offers a high impact solution not currently offered in the market.

With its cloud-based infrastructure and flexible deployment model, this solution enables not only large enterprise media distributors to extract immediate value, but smaller networks and content distributors too.

RightsLogic helps programmers view their content rights catalogue in real-time. It determines which media assets they can use, when, and how (e.g. distribution methods, territories, consumer devices, languages, formats). It lets them plan and schedule content more efficiently, and handles financial planning & analysis including amortization, royalties, and payment processing. RightsLogic packag-es all the usage, revenue, and royalty information into at-a-glance dashboards and customizable reports.

CLEAR is the world’s first hybrid cloud-enabled Media ERP Suite. It consists of 5 modules − MAM, Broadcast, Operations, Production and Distribution Cloud. CLEAR Distribution Cloud helps screen content, integrates with rights and sales order systems and tracks fulfilment of these sales con-tracts. It manages the process of validation of rights & content avails for the booked contracts and smartly creates orders for missing media along with generating orders and tracking shipments for the serving departments automatically.

“Managing and optimizing the digital supply chain can be daunting and costly for organizations,” said Mukesh Sehgal President and CEO of RSG Media. “By pre-integrating RightsLogic with CLEAR, we’ve taken the burden off of our customers while lowering their costs. Our joint solution already has a proven track record, therefore potential clients know it will work seamlessly for them as well.”


Partnerships


“Newer windows, more outlets, increasing volume and multiple geographies make servicing and governance around distribution process rather complex. There is a need for automation to aid faster go-to-market, reduce costs and enhance monetization opportunities” said Ramki Sankarana-rayanan, Founder and CEO of PFT. “This can be only achieved by connecting business and opera-tions seamlessly and that’s exactly what our partnership with RSG Media will achieve – a true end-to-end Distribution offering.”

“It’s exciting when two EIDR members come together with a strategic integration,” said EIDR Execu-tive Director Don Dulchinos. “The real payoff for EIDR usage is business and operational efficiencies, leveraging the broad international ecosystem that has coalesced around the standard EIDR identifi-er.”

Data Driven Content BrandingHow companies are winning the war for viewers by using analytics to create content brands and passionate fans

By Thomas Siegman | April 13, 2015

In 2014, the 3rd largest grossing movie was about an unknown property, a talking raccoon and a tree. When, with Marvel’s branding, Guardians of the Galaxy grossed $774 million, it turned heads. So now, it is no surprise to see other Marvel branded properties, from Agent Carter to Luke Cage, show up everywhere. It also signaled other content companies that, to be successful, they must start managing their brands the way a CPG companies manages potato chips. This is where the latest data technologies can help.

The Brand AdvantageBrands offer a promise and an emotional connection. When people say, “I know what I like,” what they mean is “I like what I know.” If Apple ever comes out with a rubber ducky, people will know that the iDuck is slick, has a brilliant UI, and costs just a little more than they are willing to spend. They will buy it anyway.

Yet, Forbes only lists four media brands on their list of the 100 most valuable brands (five, if one counts Disney, which Forbes lists as a leisure company). For an industry based on communication, this is a serious disconnect.

Choose a network and ask yourself what it stands for. If you selected ESPN, yes, it’s a destination for sports; what about others? If Starbucks started serving steaks it would not fit the brand. One might expect a similar brand dissonance if a TV show jumped to a different network or streaming service. Yet there is none.

The lack of strong brands puts content companies at a disadvantage. If a local supermarket fails to carry an unknown laundry soap, it’s the manufacturer’s problem; if they do not have Tide®, it’s the supermarket’s problem; the shoppers will complain and go elsewhere. The same is true with networks. There’s a reason that, according to Bloomberg News, ESPN gets 25% of basic subscrip-tion fees. If an MSO did not carry it, viewers would defect.



Data Driven

NEW YORK, NY (June 9, 2015) – RSG Media has signed a deal with the National Hockey League (NHL®) to implement RightsLogic, a rights management system which the NHL will use to manage the contractual rights and financials for its consumer products licensing business.

“We were looking for a licensing system which would not only manage the contractual and financial processes, but would also provide flexible analytical and reporting tools,” said Craig Harnett, NHL Chief Financial Officer. “After evaluating several options we chose RSG Media’s RightsLogic because it has the capabilities we need and a knowledgeable team supporting it.”

RSG Media’s CEO Mukesh Sehgal had only praise for the NHL. “Even though we have been work-ing with the media and entertainment industry for 30 years, we are constantly learning from our customers,” said Sehgal. “The NHL brought some great forward thinking ideas to the table which we were eager to incorporate into our product.”

About RSG Media Systems, LLC.

Founded in 1985, RSG Media Systems works with the world’s largest media companies to provide strategic insights, analytics, managed services, and proprietary software solutions that significantly improve revenues and operations. RSG Media’s products and services span three critical areas:

• Business Rights Management for Content & Consumer Products Licensingo RSG Media’s RightsLogic® system is the foremost system for managing and reporting on

content rights, royalties, obligations, finances, and opportunities.• Ad Sales Planning and Deal Management for linear, on demand, and digital properties• Yield Optimization and Big Data Analytics: RSG uses advanced mathematics and data analyt

ics to extract tens of millions of extra value out of advertising and content inventory. Cross Platform Reporting unifies usage, revenue, and royalties processing across all platforms: linear, digital, on-demand, and mobile.

• Managed Services: RSG provides economies of skill and scale in content management, yield optimization, big data, and ad sales planning.

NHL and the NHL Shield are registered trademarks of the National Hockey League. All Rights Reserved.

A Better Relationship with DataNew data technologies can help content owners cultivate a strong relationship with viewers at both the brand and show levels. It helps skilled marketers create a base of “raving fan” evangelists, using the oldest marketing tools: the 4Ps (Product, Promotion, Place, and Price), or for the more custom-er-centric, the 4 Cs (Customer, Communication, Convenience, and Cost).

Customer Data: The first task of any marketing effort is to get inside the customer’s head and use descriptive analytics to map what the customer does and how they think.. The challenge in this field is not the availability of data—we drown in data—but rather the ability to clean and unite data from so many disparate sources and create meaningful models. Although our company has been doing this work for 30 years, it’s only in recent years that we, and others have been able to automate the ingestion, so that we can immediately analyze and describe critical content metrics: viewership, buzz, and revenues across every platform, demographic, timeframe, and behavior.

Because marketers can now pull this information up on a dashboard, we can use predictive model-ing to anticipate likely behavior. Using a “ready, fire, aim” approach, in which we test a prediction, see the actual result, and immediately adjust, we create self-learning systems that rapidly improve and adjust to emerging trends. This, in turn, enables prescriptive analytics: suggesting possible opportunities and approaches to content buyers, programmers, and promoters.

The key difference between old and new technologies is we now know what users actually do; far better than relying on what they say. For years, we helped companies profile customers, using Nielsen Catalina data to discern which web ads led to in-store purchases. Today, we create infinitely more complex profiles using second-by-second data from everything: set-top boxes, social media, web activity, even home hubs for the internet of things.

We have started identifying and classifying the viewing drivers for different viewer groups. At the highest levels, our analysis indicates, these include: habit, connection with others (both other view-ers and show characters), fear of missing out, distraction & comfort from daily life/schadenfreude, education and information. We can correlate these behaviors with common watching modes from ”snacking” (e.g. vines, YouTube), to longer form “meals”, to binge-a-thons, to ambient background TV. Taken all together we can discern the viewers’ conditions of satisfaction and tailor content to be engaging and addictive.

Great promotion is more than just frequency and reach; it is communicating the right message to the right viewer, at the right time, through the right medium, and then “listening” to their response. Data driven promotion sorts users into five quintiles based on behavioral data insight:

• Committeds: The people who will definitely watch the show. It’s on their calendar or in their queue. We can levangelize through them to the larger community.

• Likelys: These are our prime targets as we move them into the committed category, building desire and enhancing their viewing drivers.

• Potentials: People who could easily become ‘Likelys’, but lack the awareness or information required to create desire and action.

• Unlikelys and Nevers: It is important to identify these viewers and avoid wasting resources on them.



Practiced properly, data driven communication builds awareness, encourages trial, and builds brand affinity between the show and the viewer. It drives repeat viewing and, when done expertly, foments word of mouth.

The data is there. We have the technology. Yet media has been slow to develop brands. Perhaps this is because product marketing is not as glamorous as creating a hit TV show. By using data insights we can “help content find its audience,” building strong content brands that become daily staples of viewers’ media diet: shows and networks to which viewers return to again and again, because they satisfy. Practitioners require patience as they slowly steward their brand. Yet, as we are seeing, brands can transmute a raccoon and a tree into must-watch gold.


RSG Media at NAB 2015March 18, 2015 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Come and experience the pioneering work RSG Media Systems is doing to increase its clients’ content return-on-investment and advertising revenue at the NAB Show 2015. RSG Media represen-tatives will be presenting solutions that address end-to-end rights management, linear, non-linear and digital program scheduling, royalties and amortization processing, yield optimization and analyt-ics for ad sales, and lastly, reporting on content usage, viewership and revenues.

Moreover, newly released solutions will be introduced including cross platform analytics for ad sales and promos, optimization for promo placement and content acquisition, digital program planning, improved rights catalogue reporting with net rights analytics, and our newest product, the Rights Window Illustrator with visualization tools and charts.

The NAB Show is the world’s largest annual conference for media and broadcast professionals. The convention takes place from April 12th-16th at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Schedule a demo today with RSG Media at [email protected].

NAB


RSG Media to Present Rights 101 Workshop February 10, 2015

RSG Media to present the first annual Rights 101 Workshop at Digital Entertainment World 2015. Thomas Siegman, EVP of Strategy, Innovation, & Client Relations and David Hoffman, Director of Business Development, at RSG Media, along with Optimity Advisor's Julia Goodwin, will deliver industry insights to help navigate the complex Rights Management space.

Mr. Hoffman states, “ROI is, put simply, the value of your content inventory x yield. That’s it. And, equally simplistically, there are two ways to boost your ROI: Build revenues, or cut costs.” Monetiz-ing content by building revenues and cutting costs and managing all emerging platforms are just a couple of topics on hand for this workshop. In addition, Mr. Siegman will also be moderating a panel that will explore the impact of the newly proposed copyright law.

Rights 101


Defying Gravity How MTV uses machine-learning algorithms to let its promos reach more viewers in a fragmenting audience.

By Dennis Kneale Network television is at risk of getting caught in a vicious cycle. As the audience fragments in a million directions, smaller audiences see promos for new shows on-air; then as new shows draw smaller crowds, even fewer viewers see promos for other programs. Television networks’ reach (the total number of viewers who watch for a minute or more once a day) is down a daunting 12% in a year. Yet Viacom networks, led by MTV, have had their promos seen by a 6% larger audience—even as they use fewer spots to do it. That is a stunning gap of 18 percent-age points. “When network reach is down, increasing your reach 6% is actually a huge accomplishment,” says Oktay Arifkhan of Viacom Media Networks.

Give credit to the machines. Machine-learning algorithms help MTV and its siblings, Comedy Cen-tral, VH-1, Spike and others, show their promotional ads to the “right” viewers (the most impres-sionable and like-minded). They target new recruits with better aim and achieve broader exposure by mixing and matching the right networks and shows. Over all, they are able to reach more viewers while using less ad inventory to do it, and they achieve some stunning increases in the “conversion rate,” what portion of viewers who see a promo then tune in to watch the promoted show.The Viacom nets have pulled off this death-defying stunt by using Prophet 2.0, a “promo optimiza-tion platform” developed by RSG Media on behalf of MTV Media Planning 360, the multiplatform marketing and promotions department for MTV Networks. RSG is the sponsor of this series on Big Data Insights.

Prophet is the inspiration of Chris Visceglia, VP of Media Planning & Scheduling Strategy at MTV 360, who wanted to meld “the science and the art.” “The science is the advanced mathematical algorithms and Big Data to drive the media planning, being informed about the audience and apply-ing it to the art,” he says. “The creative is the promos that our own marketing group makes in-house.”

Big Data Insights


This is Not a Test

Just how well Prophet does at placing promos and predicting audience patterns was revealed in a study that Arifkhan unveiled at a conference in February in Fort Lauderdale, hosted by Broadcast & Cable and Multichannel News. Arifkhan, who has an eight-word title at VMN (senior vice president of analytics and measurement science), says these results are real—this is not a test:

• MTV was able to reach 28.3 million people with promos on MTV for the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards, despite using 17% fewer spots compared with a year ago.

• By running VMA promos on sibling music channels MTV2, VH-1 and Logo and on stable mates Comedy Central, Spike, TV Land and Nick@Nite, MTV expanded the reach by 40%, to 40 million viewers. The Prophet smart machine did so while using 8% fewer total promo spots than in 2014.

• Also, by aiming VMA promos to viewers of other networks’ shows that are sympatico with the MTV bent, the optimizer scored a much higher conversion rate than the year before: 24% of viewers ages 18 to 49 who saw the promo then watched the VMAs in 2015, up from less than 20% of promo-watchers in 2014.

• Devote 5% of spots to non-MTV nets, and the promos’ reach expands only 4% beyond just the MTV audience; devote one-quarter of the campaign to other networks, the reach soars by almost 30%. That is a seven-fold increase in reach for a five-fold increase in airtime.

• A startling 47% of viewers who saw VMA promos across multiple networks went on to watch the awards show; that compares with only 20% for viewers who saw a promo only on MTV.

“That shows the value leverage of cross-channel promotion,” Arifkhan says. “When people see your message not just on your network but on multiple networks, it substantially increases conversion rates.” Since the 1950s it has been an unwritten law that a viewer has to see a promo three times to “convert” and tune in. “For millennials, if you increase the frequency to six-to-seven it’s optimal.”

Smart Machine

The stats themselves are striking, but it is even more remarkable that Prophet can know these things at all, that it can track viewing patterns and ratings, measure changes and unearth strategies out of such a massive pile of Big Data. This machine-learning system is able to run more than 110,000 different simulations for scheduling programs and promotional spots, all within minutes, and pick the best solution. It can schedule many campaigns simultaneously and ensure the most important ones get priority. The platform then assesses the results, adjusting on the fly when the data flow in and reveal that the Prophet blew it.

“Our machine-learning algorithm learns from past successes, but more importantly, past failures, and automatically adjusts to those success and failures when moving forward,” says John Curran, a business-knowledge specialist at RSG Media.


In the days before the Prophet platform, the Viacom networks did this promo scheduling by hand, using intuition and ratings data that came in four weeks after a show had aired, too late to let them correct flaws. The Prophet runs through ratings data 24/7, produces a trend report in two days and adjusts accordingly. It would take a staff of six full-time analysts to try performing these same feats, Arifkhan says—and not as well. Plus, they would have to take time out to sleep and eat and recharge, while the machines can run 24/7. And however smart the system is today, in machine-learning generally, it will get a thousand times smarter only a few years from now; and then smarter still by another thou-sand-fold increase a few years after that.

“This was my idea, my dream, our vision for a very long time, but we couldn’t have done it without the RSG guys. They made it real,” MTV’s Chris Visceglia says. “As Viacom sets out to solve the aggregate issue of data all over the place and finding measurements for audiences fragmented on different screens, this is a giant step in that direction.” He adds: “The possibilities with this seem somewhat endless at the moment.”

MEDIA

Contact Matt Klepac at [email protected] arrange a call or demo.

450 Lexington Ave., 4th Floor NY, NY 10017

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Press Kit Reduced - RSG Media can now help managers project content-related profits and make decisions that opti- ... • Yield Optimization and Big Data ... Press Kit Reduced