A SCOTTISH software company that works with some of the world’s biggest television groups has announced record growth as demand for TV search services soars.
Glasgow-based ThinkAnalytics – makers of a recommendation engine which helps to highlight content choices for viewers – said it had signed 12 new customers during 2015 – contributing to 50 per cent growth in profits and revenue growth of 25 per cent.
The company, which has seen staff numbers grow from 40 to 70 over the last year and also has offices in London, Los Angeles, Singapore and Pune in India, declined to give figures but said its technology was now used by over 70 video service providers in more than 40 countries around the world.
“There’s a lot of expansion going on both in terms of employees in the company and the offices that we’ve got around the world in Los Angeles, the UK, Singapore and India,” said ThinkAnalytics founder and chief technology officer Peter Docherty. “So we’ve got people in various territories and customers in 35 countries covering all sorts of operators, including satellite, cable, web TV and on-demand TV providers.”
Over the last year, ThinkAnalytics has added ten new languages and now supports 32 languages, including Hindi and Mandarin.
New customers include Malaysian satellite Pay TV provider Astro Malaysia, Louisiana-based provider of high-speed internet, phone and TV services, CenturyLink, and Hong Kong-based telecoms and media group PCCW.
The company has also extended its business with Liberty Global, the world’s largest international cable company supplying telecoms and television services across 14 countries. There have been further contract wins with a number of high profile operators in North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America.
“These wins take the number of subscribers that will benefit from ThinkAnalytics’ technology to over 170 million,” the company said in a statement.
The firm's software learns in real time from a subscriber’s viewing behaviour and makes recommendations for other content they might like. The technology works across multiple devices including tablets, mobile, web and set-top boxes.
“There might by 50,000 programmes on this week,” Mr Docherty explained. “It’s too hard to find them so we really learn what you like and what you might like and [put recommendations] in front of you at the right time. It’s all about personalising content and making it easy for you to find other content that you might like.”
Other ThinkAnalytics customers include Sky, Viaplay, Atlanta, Georgia-based Cox Communications, Bern-based Swisscom and German group Unitymedia.
In 2014, the employee-owned company won an Emmy award for its technology from the US National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences – a sign of how highly-regarded its recommendation engine is within industry, the company said.
Customer studies have shown people tend to watch more television, buy more one-off items and feel their pay television packages are better value when the recommendation engine is deployed.
ThinkAnalytics has also launched an analytics platform called ThinkBigData that analyses viewing behaviour data and the data embedded in content to produce information that the company says leads to reduced churn, new revenue opportunities, increased viewer engagement and enhanced content discovery.
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