Personalisation in Video Streaming: Top Trends

In this article, we will look at what personalisation is, and how in particular it’s shaping the world of digital video streaming and ‘Over the top’ (OTT) video services. We also want to make a few predictions on where we think personalisation is going in the future and the impact it might have.

In the digital space, personalisation can be defined as the action of producing or displaying something specifically tailored to meet someone’s individual requirements or tastes.

Every day, we come across different forms of personalisation in the digital and real world. The wallpaper you might have chosen for your phone, or the wallpaper you chose for your bedroom.

In these examples, it was an explicit choice on your part.

Explicit data is what a user might tell, for example, a video streaming service. If a user were to rate the series Stranger Things with a “thumbs up”, the service would gain a clear understanding that this is the sort of content type the user enjoys and that they would want to have similar recommendations.

Implicit data, on the other hand, refers to data gathered and learned through a user’s behaviour. For example, if a user watches several series of Game of the Thrones, the video streaming service would recommend similar content due to the users’ viewing behaviour, assuming that this is the sort of content the user enjoys.

In short, the user hasn’t explicitly said that they enjoy Game of Thrones, but the service was able to pick that up from their behaviour. The opposite behaviour can be just as beneficial; users would be shown less content that the service knows they never watch.

Within the video streaming space, personalisation mainly refers to a 1 to 1 experience, where all the offerings are tailored as per the user’s behaviour and interactions. By delivering a personalised experience, you can make each user feel the service is exclusively designed for them and thus improve organic engagement.

Thanks to advanced technologies like AI-based machine learning and recommendation engines; delivering a personalised streaming experience is now largely automated.

The colossal rise in video streaming has created a shift in paradigm. No longer are consumers concerned with ownership but rather, they’re concerned with access. With Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and other streaming services competing to give users the best service for relatively inexpensive monthly subscriptions, users can now choose what to watch, when they want and how they want.

However, the actual playback of content is just the end game, and that exact content maybe available across different services. Users will come to expect the entire experience to be tailored and customised to their needs.

We believe you’ll start to get more options to control some of the things that you’ve just come to expect as default functionality, i.e. auto-playing of content or trailers, automatically moving onto the next episode, letting credits roll to the end without making recommendations, automatically skipping the introduction. Some of it will be implicitly learned by the platform, some of it will be user controlled.

We’ve all faced the dilemma of being spoiled for choice with what to watch and spending more time choosing than watching.

Presenting content in a way that is meaningful and enticing the user is as important as ever and will become even more so in the future.

Netflix was one of the first companies that saw the potential of video streaming technology when it launched in 2007. Using a combination of machine learning, algorithms and creativity, Netflix has been able to create hyper-personalised viewing experiences for each of its members. Here’s how:

The Recommendation System
 – When it comes to personalised recommendations, Netflix is a well-known player. Research shows that more than 80% of the TV shows people watch on Netflix are discovered through the platform’s recommendation system.

The recommendation system pulls together data (ratings, viewing patterns, location, search history etc.) to create the perfect suggestions for users to browse through and enjoy.

Artwork Personalisation 
- For many years, Netflix’s goal was for the recommendation system to get the right titles in front of each member. But the job of recommendation doesn’t stop there. The homepage should be able to convince a user why a particular show or film has been recommended for them — especially if it’s something new or that the user hasn’t heard of before.

Artwork is the first and most important element in trying to convince a user that a film or series is a good watch. The artwork may highlight a title, a recognisable actor, capture an exciting moment or contain a dramatic scene which conveys the essence of the series or film.

Each member will respond differently to what artwork attracts them but if the presented artwork captures the member’s attention, this increases the probability of play, maximises enjoyment and achieves effective personalisation.

This level of personalisation will only continue to evolve, with for example the possibility to display personalised trailers specifically cut and edited to entice the user into hitting ‘Play’.

Today, more than ever, technology companies are pushing to make their services more accessible, not just for those with disabilities and impairments, but for everyone.

We think that in the coming year, users will start seeing a shift in how platforms promote accessibility, and it will no longer be a ‘hidden’ or ‘specialist’ feature, tucked away in the settings.

Streaming services understand (as well as it often being a legal requirement) that providing subtitles, closed captions and audio descriptions in multiple languages broadens their customer base to include the hundreds of millions of people worldwide who may have some form of impairment.

In one of Hulu’ annual hackathons, to address the topic of accessibility, more than a quarter of the projects addressed the needs of viewers with disabilities and the success of the hackathon led to the development of two new features.

The first feature focused on text legibility. The U.S based service announced that it now uses easier to read text because it enhanced the text opacity as well as a screen reader.

Other features proposed included an ‘eye remote’ to allow users to navigate and control the application with their eye as well as a colour correction tool allowing users to adjust the UI to accommodate colour blindness.

We predict that this level of accessibility-specific personalisation will become mainstream, and indeed added to the list of legal requirements of any public video streaming platform.

Viewers will soon start see a wholesale change in the way that they experience live sports events on their devices.

Until recently, you got your sporting fix whenever you could. If the TV schedule said a football game kicked off at 12.30PM, you dropped everything else to make sure you caught it. But with online video, fans are watching sports on their own terms.

We believe that the future of sports will be customisable, interactive and will put viewers in the centre of the experience.

F1 TV is a digital experience to take you closer to all the action, putting the fans in the driving seat. Fans get access to commercial-free live streams of each race with multi language commentary as well as exclusive access to all 20 driver on-board cameras throughout every race session.

In a similar manner, Formula E, puts fans at the centre of the experience with ‘Fanboost’, a feature that allows fans to vote for their favourite driver and reward them an extra boost of power during the race.

Envisioned by Steve Ballmer, chairman of the L.A. Clippers, the ClipperVision Productpowered by a blend of artificial intelligence and augmented reality brings fans into the game, letting them customise their own viewing experience.

The augmentation happens inside the app using video from inside the arena. A user can pick multiple live streams to experience the action differently, whether you prefer shooting percentages overlayed over player’s heads (Courtvision), watching games with celebrity guest hosts (Ballervision), or even seeing fun animation effects (Mascot Mode).

All the above are just a small selection of the type of personalisation options open to views to sports content today, and we believe this is something that is only going to grow and become more mainstream in the sporting world.

We often take for granted that the user interface (UI) presented to us as fixed and non-negotiable. Increasingly, we feel this will no longer be the case and users will be given far more control over exactly what the UI looks like.

Recently, it’s become more mainstream to be given an option of ‘light’ or ‘dark’ mode, and although useful, this still comes of as very limited and ‘pre-canned’.

Slack has over 10 million daily users, accounting for 40% of Fortune 100 businesses’ go-to communications tools. The success isn’t hard to understand. One of the great things Slack has done to create a thoughtful experience is to allow each user to customise the user interface by picking specific themes, or indeed their own colour combinations for different elements of the UI.

Within the video streaming space, we believe that personalisation of the user interface is something that will become common and indeed expected by users; not just from the perspective of ‘decorative’ elements but also the layout and positioning of content on the screen. Don’t want the ‘recommended for you’ rail of the videos at the top of your homepage? You have the choice to move it and personalise it to your heart’s content.

Above are a few examples of how we believe personalisation is changing the video streaming industry. No doubt more and more that will emerge as we progress through the decade. One thing we are sure of is that personalisation will become ever more important in a market that is becoming more and more crowded.

Want to discuss or need any help developing a personalised experience? We’d be delighted to chat.