This forecast has been made by ABI Research, on the basis that many pay TV operators are now transforming their services around unified analytics, while looking towards artificial intelligence and machine learning for automated optimization. This in turn will require unification of data collection and analysis to improve performance and quality of service while extracting insights to help with marketing and content acquisition.

Currently pay TV analytics is being driven by just a few major operators that have sought early advantage in various ways, notably Comcast, Netflix, Sky and Telstra. All of these have succeeded in differentiating themselves by use of analytics to improve operational metrics. Netflix has focused strongly on recommendation for example, while Sky has majored on advanced targeted advertising. Other pay TV operators are being forced to follow these leading players according to ABI Research.

This trend is driving demand for a new generation of analytics products capable of integrating data from diverse sources. ABI highlighted Samba, an automatic content recognition (ACR) based measurement platform for smart TVs, as an advanced product with its ability to capture total device viewing not limited to a specific service. ABI noted how this company in June 2017 raised $30 million in growth capital aimed at disrupting the data measurement space.

The analytics firm also noted how today’s video analytics was dominated by point solutions covering content and metadata engagement, network optimization and consumption measurement, along with large network based Business Support Systems. “Today’s siloed solutions mean that each business unit may rely on separate sources of data in solutions coming from different vendors, especially small and mid-size video services,” said Sam Rosen, Managing Director and Vice President at ABI Research. “Best-in-class OTT companies and Tier One operators with multiple services in diverse geographies have started to build unified data platforms that centralize data and then provide access to every group based on their functional requirements.”

ABI might also have noted how the growth in analytics is drawing vendors from adjacent sectors of the video ecosystem, especially revenue protection. Verimatrix for example has exploited what it calls its privileged position as custodian of secrets and protector of content within that video ecosystem both to secure and provide valuable data for analytics. At first Verimatrix was content to exploit the analytics market through partnership with specialist vendors in that field. But now it has moved in more directly with the acquisition announced June 2017 of the MiriMON technology and development team from Genius Digital, which has been a Verimatrix audience analytics partner for TV. This brings client device data collection technology that had already been integrated with the Verimatrix Verspective Operator Analytics and ViewRight Ultra downloadable app packages. As part of Verspective, the technology provides real-time service quality and customer experience visibility at the device level, as well as feeding the platform with data yielding competitive insight for video services. This acquisition enables closer alignment with Verspective as well as full control over roadmaps for the core data collection technology and service dashboard displays, according to Verimatrix.

“We see the real-time client data as a key piece to help our customers gain a holistic picture of how their services are performing and how subscribers are interacting with those services,” said Tom Munro, CEO of Verimatrix. With its broad data collection capability MiriMON is the sort of technology ABI is advocating in its report.

Meanwhile Verimatrix’ rival revenue security provider, Kudelski’s Nagra, has also been flagging video analytics. The company recently highlighted findings from its Pay-TV Innovation Forum 2017, conducted with research and strategy consultancy MTM, indicating how service providers were exploiting analytics to cope with pricing pressure, cut down on churn and stem revenue losses resulting from increased competition from OTT providers.