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GLORIA LEE: My name is Gloria Lee.
JOHN ABEL: And my name is John Abel.
GLORIA LEE: I have been in the media and tech industry
for over 15 years.
I love helping media companies grow using new technology.
JOHN ABEL: I'm one of the technical directors
of the Office of the CTO, here with inside Google Cloud.
GLORIA LEE: And have worked in a variety of roles and companies,
including Accenture, Deloitte, Miramax, and Fox.
I've also worked at Endeavor Streaming
and for an AI/ML startup.
JOHN ABEL: Most of my time is based
on the innovative technology that Google develops
and also transformation within site customers
across multiple industries, including the media
and entertainment industry.
GLORIA LEE: Data is shared in a variety of ways in the media
and entertainment ecosystem.
So usually the information around top performers
is shared, whether it's most watched TV shows, or movies,
or most binged content, or domestic box office
information.
And that information drives a lot
of revenue for foreign media companies.
JOHN ABEL: I think the importance today
is that with inside technology, there's
three categories of data.
There's the data you own, which is the private data,
and then there's the public data you can add on top to enrich
and give you new lenses of it.
What we're seeing is that one aspect that's
happened in all industries and entertainment media
is no different than actually this personalization,
and this high personalization means
you have to add more data lenses on.
And then probably the most valuable data
is generated data, typically from machine learning or AI,
where you're seeing new insight in data that
gives you new opportunities.
GLORIA LEE: Technology has played a huge role
in terms of the volume of content
that is in the marketplace because the technology has
enabled media companies to distribute more,
and as a result of that, more content is produced
and there are more opportunities to leverage key
moments in that content using AI/ML technology.
So AI/ML technology, Artificial Intelligence
and Machine Learning, is what enables people to quickly look
through their content to find relevant moments for marketing
purposes.
The most important metrics for media companies
are the top performers.
So which shows, or films, or short clips of content
are being watched the most?
Who is watching that content?
Who is watching that content will drive marketing
and revenue decisions.
And that type of content is also likely to be reproduced again,
so it's almost like that lens into the top performers
using potentially AI/ML technology to see what
is performing the best helps media companies continue
to grow their bottom line.
JOHN ABEL: One of the things that I
feel that we're moving into is that actually the value of data
is now starting to be realized.
And one of the aspects we're seeing across all industries
is that when we used to deal with what
we call the commercial contracts of video sharing
or collaborating, we now have to think about the data contracts.
And actually because those data attributes
need to be visible, especially when you're
dealing with the microsegments of media content,
when you're trying to catalog it,
when you're trying to identify key stars, or characters in it,
these aspects are critical because people search on terms.
Now you have to search for the content you want.
It's very direct to what you're actually wanting at that point
and it changes highly dynamic.
GLORIA LEE: This trend is happening in the media industry
today.
When content distribution deals are made, that component--
the data piece--
how much is shared about viewing patterns per film,
or per TV show, that information is
critical to helping grow media businesses.
With any type of change, there's usually
three categories of groups.
There's a group that's really excited about the change,
there's a group that really could care less
about the change, and then there's
a group that's completely opposed to the change.
So in terms of advice for the foreign organization,
it's really tapping into the leaders for those three
different groups within the company,
and trying to get them on board, and seeing
what their drivers are.
As much as this is a change in technology for the media
business, it's always about the people at the end of the day.
So there is a tight connection between the business,
and the technology, and the people.
So it's really getting the people on board
around the business drivers that are ultimately driving
the technology decision.
JOHN ABEL: And I think that, again, entertainment and media
is going to be the similar to other industries,
where actually getting the data in a meaningful state
closer to the business owner is going to be essential.
They can't afford large technology projects.
That's where we're introducing new technology that
allows the business user to get closer to the data
at an accelerated pace.
GLORIA LEE: Getting the user closer to the data
so that having a tighter connection
between the technology and the business,
and the value of that data can provide
could really help companies move forward faster
and really take advantage of the things that
come along with new technology and what data can provide.
JOHN ABEL: I'll give you three tips
in the entertainment and media industry of what we're seeing.
Tip one is real time trends.
We're seeing customers that are using Google Cloud are working
out the trends in their data in a much more real time
fashion than ever before.
At the executive layer, these trends
could be service quality, it could
be the demand on what the viewers are wanting
and how they're wanting it, and it
could be insight to planning of the future.
The second element we're seeing is
where they're now moving some of the business logic
right to the front of the edge of how the recipient is
using technology.
So elements like federated learning,
it's basically a running machine learning at the edge.
And it's giving the processing at the edge,
meaning that only the aggregated data comes back
to the center, which means the insight's not lost,
but the privacy is kept.
And then the last aspect is actually understanding trends
outside of their industry that impact entertainment and media.
And actually looking at data about using
data of knowing what type of media to use,
what type of content to show, and actually
looking at the greater impact that's outside
of their specific domain.
So if you think about it, what we're actually
doing with our customers in entertainment
and media is actually providing the ability
to scale their data needs, allow them
to enrich it using new data sets,
and more importantly, giving their executives
visibility to this data at speeds
they've never seen before.
There is now a direct connection between how
the viewer looks at an organization
and looks at their sustainability credentials
and actually knowing how they produce the films, how
they produce the programs.
What is the carbon footprint?
This will become a theme that will get traction.
If you look at it, then actually many sports
are already going this route.
You've got the electric vehicles,
you've got sailing events where they're looking at carbon
neutral.
What we typically see, the trends
go through technology, through sports, and then
into entertainment and media.
So I feel there will be a trend where media companies have
to actually articulate their sustainability to their viewers
to make sure that, in the future,
that they're seen as green entertainment.
Now the great thing is data gives you insight
to how you share that, and actually how you capture that
and how you can articulate it.
It will be interesting to see that in the future one
of these hyper films will actually
be fully carbon neutral.
And it'll be interesting to see how the viewers take that
and how they warm to it.
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