2016 LA edition
Santa Monica · August 2016
The inaugural Entertainment Analytics Conference. Around 30 attendees from TV, SVOD, film studios, music, data and technology companies, and universities gathered for an intimate day of sharing and learning about entertainment analytics and data science.
Talks
- “A Moneyball Moment for Hollywood?” – The keynote framed the conference’s founding question: entertainment has historically been a gut-feel industry, but these firms now compete against technology companies that make quantitative decisions. In the fight between data and gut feel, it’s not even a fair fight.
- “Measuring and Predicting Global Demand for Content” – A method for quantifying audience demand for entertainment content across multiple markets using digital signals, enabling cross-country comparison of content appetite.
- “A Global Cross-Media Buzz Reporting System” – Using Google Trends data to build an automated system for tracking and comparing marketing impact across campaigns, territories and media types.
- “Testing Print and Digital Pricing Using Randomised Experiments” – Randomised controlled experiments applied to media pricing decisions, demonstrating how experimental design can replace intuition in subscription pricing.
- “Global Streaming Distribution and Frictionless Digital Trade” – An examination of how digital distribution is reshaping international content trade, reducing friction but creating new competitive dynamics.
- “Improving the Economics of Measuring Advertising Effectiveness” – Ghost ads (showing a control group what they would have seen without the ad campaign) offered a cost-effective alternative to traditional brand lift studies.
- “Using Content Genome to Predict TV Content Sales” – A system decomposing TV shows into 30+ attributes to predict international demand across 500+ seasons and 20 countries. Synopses predicted accurately; scripts confused the analysis with stage directions and dialogue filler.
- “The Insight Contained in the Social Graph” – Graph-based audience clustering using follower networks (not what people say) revealed distinct audience segments invisible to traditional analytics. Among 300,000 followers of major comic-book brands, superfans skewed 60% toward one publisher while film fans skewed 56% toward the rival.
- “The Impact of Free Streaming on Paid Download Sales” – A public broadcaster found free streaming reduced paid digital sales by 7–8%, but the advertising revenue earned from free streaming almost exactly cancelled out the lost sales revenue, creating a genuine strategic stalemate.
- “Early International Digital Movie Releases and Domestic Box Office” – Releasing films on Chinese streaming platforms triggered high-quality pirated copies within days, causing a roughly 13% decline in US theatrical revenue starting from week four of the box office run.
- “How Messaging Apps Are Changing Online Video” – For Generation Z, the primary way they encounter a song is a 15-second clip. Messaging platforms like WeChat and QQ had 1.6 billion monthly users but offered essentially zero analytics. Ignoring platforms because metrics don’t exist was described as dangerous.
What we learned
The Moneyball Moment: The keynote framed the conference’s founding question: entertainment has historically been a gut-feel industry where people rise by backing hits. But these firms now compete against technology companies that make quantitative decisions. In the fight between data and gut feel, it’s not even a fair fight.
Piracy Leaks Within Days: Releasing films on Chinese streaming platforms triggered high-quality pirated copies within days. Of 23 tracked titles, 22 had a leak appear within a week. The damage: a roughly 13% decline in US theatrical revenue, beginning at week four of the box office run.
Free Streaming Costs Exactly What It Earns: A public broadcaster found free streaming reduced paid digital sales by 7–8%. But the advertising revenue earned from streaming almost exactly cancelled out the lost sales, creating a genuine strategic stalemate between public service mission and commercial subsidiary.
Scripts Mislead, Synopses Predict: Researchers building a content genome found that machine learning on scripts produced inconsistent results (too much non-plot material: stage directions, camera notes, filler), while synopses predicted international demand accurately across 500+ seasons and 20 countries.
The Social Graph Revelation: Clustering 300,000 followers of major entertainment brands by follower networks (not what they say) revealed distinct segments invisible to traditional analytics. A “moms” cluster appeared on Twitter but not on Pinterest, where “dads” emerged instead, each self-identifying on the platform where they are the minority.
15 Seconds Is the Whole Song: For Generation Z, the primary way they encounter and internalise a song is a 15-second clip. Messaging platforms had 1.6 billion monthly users but offered essentially zero analytics. Ignoring platforms because metrics don’t exist was described as dangerous.