Connections

Data is quickly becoming a critical asset for entertainment and media companies, but some obstacles stand in the way of smart content leveraging all the data around your content, according to Matt Turner, chief strategy officer of media and manufacturing at MarkLogic.

“What if it wasn’t actually the content, [but] the data that’s our most important asset, he said July 25 at the start of a conference session called “Operationalize Your Data and Get the Most Out of Your Smart Content” at the Smart Content Summit East event, part of the Media & Entertainment (M&E) Day at the Microsoft Conference Center.

“And I’m actually going to start there shockingly — if you know me I’m going to talk about data,” he said during the session in which he also discussed how leading entertainment organizations including NBC and Sony Pictures are investing in data and how the operational data hub pattern is helping them make good on the promised value of data.

As he did at the annual HITS Spring event, Turner pointed to a quote from Shelly Palmer, CEO of advisory firm The Palmer Group, who had said, “data rich or data poor, companies with the greatest ability to turn data into action are going to win.” Palmer made that point in 2015 because he was trying to point out that it’s not your audience size, it’s not your revenue and it’s not your engagement that’s most important in who will win. Turner also again pointed out that Apple, Facebook and Google are all still in the lead when it comes to data.

“What I wanted to do is kind of think about this idea of smart content with you guys and just give you a little flavor of the big picture,” he said July 25. “What’s going on is people are using a different approach and saying now we’re going to invest in data and we can invest in the right kind of data and then putting that into action,” he said, adding: “We’re here to hang out with you guys and talk about how you can put it into action.”

After all, as he said in the spring, “you’re not going to get true digital transformation — you’re not going to get to this next place…unless you know where your data comes from and how you can use it.” And the key to an organization’s digital transformation is making sure people know where data comes from and how they can use it, he noted, advising media and entertainment companies to treat their data “as an asset.”

Pointing to MarkLogic solutions, he said his company’s Media Data Hub helps organizations create great experiences and lead the digital transformation. Its Data Hub Service is a cloud service that deploys in minutes with predictable, low cost, he noted.

The 2019 M&E Day, which also included Content Protection Summit East conference tracks, was produced by the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA), in association with the Content Delivery & Security Association (CDSA), the Hollywood IT Society (HITS) and the Smart Content Council, and was presented by Microsoft, with sponsorship by Akamai, BTI Studios, Independent Security Evaluators, LiveTiles, MarkLogic, RSG Media, ThinkAnalytics, Amazon Web Services, the Entertainment ID Registry (EIDR), the Trusted Partner Network (TPN) and Richey May Technology Solutions.

Click here to download audio of the MarkLogic presentation. Click here to download the slide deck.