2022 LA edition
Marina del Rey · 28-29 July 2022
The conference returned after a two-year COVID hiatus with around 70 attendees, up from 31 in 2016. Topics included Thompson Sampling for ticket pricing, Markov Chain subscriber lifetime value, structural modelling for release windows, playlist power, the SVOD-to-AVOD transition, and the first live demonstration of language models for entertainment analytics.
Talks
- “Pricing Movie Tickets with Bayesian Bandits” – A cinema chain abandoned traditional regression models and adopted Thompson Sampling instead, treating each theatre like a multi-armed bandit running 10,000 simulated iterations per pricing decision. Movie demand shifts so drastically week to week that traditional price elasticity requires stable demand cinema never has.
- “Measuring the Value of Content on Screens and Streams” – A content analytics company scored over 2,000 characteristics per film using human analysts. Self-organising maps projected this data onto a 2D plane, creating a topographic map of cinema. One superhero film independently clustered apart from its franchise peers because it was actually a spy thriller in disguise.
- “Subscription Lifetime Value Using Markov Chains” – A streaming platform showed that the standard industry method for valuing subscriber acquisition overstates the true value by approximately five times. The error: it ignores the baseline probability that people would have subscribed anyway.
- “Optimising Release Windows with Counterfactual Simulation” – Structural modelling examined how consumers choose between formats, extended to include piracy, allowing simulation of alternate release scenarios of interest to the business.
- “Understanding Audiences Through Content Genome Data” – Overlaying audience taste profiles on a content genome map revealed that marketing a film’s core genre might alienate the target demographic, while a secondary content thread could be a stronger hook.
- “The Power of Streaming Playlists” – Research on the 4,000 most-followed new music playlists found that playlist inclusion causally determines roughly 50% of a song’s total streams. Major-label share on platform-curated playlists fell by ten percentage points, largely explaining their declining streaming revenue share.
- “Marketing to Fandoms” – Data-driven approaches to understanding and activating fan communities across entertainment properties.
- “Communicating Data Science to Executives” – The gap between analytical sophistication and business impact was framed as a four-link chain: right data, right method, right recommendation, right adoption. Almost every conference presentation addressed only the second link.
- “Unlocking the Hidden Value of Large AI Models” – A live demonstration where a non-coder used natural language to run a clustering analysis of music industry data. Only about six of 70 attendees had corporate-endorsed language model access. Five admitted to using non-endorsed tools that could get them in trouble.
- “Pricing Against Piracy” – Economic modelling of how pricing strategies interact with piracy rates across different release windows and geographic markets.
- “Improving Causal Inference Using Data-Mined Variables” – Novel approaches to strengthening causal claims in observational entertainment data by identifying and controlling for algorithmically discovered confounders.
- “Social Data for Unlocking Net Audiences” – Using social graph analysis to identify and reach net-new audiences beyond existing marketing databases.
- “Transitioning from Ad-Free to Ad-Supported Streaming” – Average revenue per user was higher for ad-supported content, but survival rates were lower. Adding linear channels proved to be an important growth driver.
What we learned
The Five-Times Overvaluation Trap: The standard industry method for valuing subscriber acquisition overstates the true value by approximately five times. It ignores the baseline probability that people would have subscribed anyway. Marketing teams systematically claim credit for revenue that would have materialised regardless.
Playlists Control Half of Streaming Success: Playlist inclusion causally determines roughly 50% of a song’s total streams. The platform’s own curated playlists account for about 30%, with major label playlists adding 20%. Major-label share on platform-curated playlists fell by ten percentage points, largely explaining their declining streaming revenue share.
Slot Machines for Movie Tickets: A cinema chain used Bayesian Thompson Sampling to optimise ticket pricing, treating each location like a multi-armed bandit running 10,000 simulations per decision. Movie demand resets so drastically each week that traditional price elasticity simply does not apply.
2,000 Genes per Film: A content genome with over 2,000 characteristics per film, scored by human analysts, was projected onto a 2D map using self-organising maps. One superhero film clustered apart from its franchise peers because it was actually a spy thriller in disguise. The same technique revealed that marketing a film’s core genre can alienate the target audience.
The Better-the-AI, the-Worse-the-Human Effect: Students given the option to use AI tools in a university course produced lower quality work than those who did not. The pattern: “they got lazy, they thought it sounds good, but it’s good fluff.” A separate study on recruiters using language models to screen CVs found the same dynamic. The better the AI, the worse the human performed.
The Analytics Impact Chain: The gap between analytical sophistication and business impact was framed as a four-link chain: right data, right method, right recommendation, right adoption. Almost every conference presentation addressed only the second link. As one organiser noted, “nobody ever suggests an ROI case study” because companies will not share what happened after the insight was delivered.