24i has acquired the privately held, UK data specialist The Filter for an undisclosed fee.
Co-founded by the musician, singer, songwriter, record producer and activist Peter Gabriel, The Filter’s cutting-edge data science, analysis and machine learning technologies help consumers to find and watch more of the video content they love. Its customers include Joyn in Germany, EPIX in the US and BBC Studios-owned UKTV Play.
Commenting on the acquisition, 24i CEO Dr Neale?Foster said: “24i’s OTT and Pay TV customers know that increased consumer engagement is an essential element of their business success – it drives down churn for subscription services and increases the lifetime value per customer in ad-supported business models. The Filter’s managed service is based on a ‘test, learn and refine’, AI-based methodology that sets it apart from other off-the-shelf recommendation engines and analytics packages. We’re excited to bring this expertise in advanced, data-driven personalisation and recommendations into 24i’s modular offering”.
The Filter’s CEO Damien Read, who now becomes 24i’s SVP of Data Products, added: “The Filter has a history of significantly improving people’s entertainment experience though using cutting edge data science. We power everything from the ‘recommended for you’ rails in video streaming apps, to personalized recommendations in marketing and even entirely dynamic user interfaces that adapt to the individual consumer’s viewing habits. Continuously improving personalization is enormously important to our streaming customers and our powerful insights often help to shape their strategic thinking. We are very excited to be joining the 24i family as this will help us to further develop our offering and bring this game-changing technology to a wider range of entertainment companies worldwide”.
Read and The Filter’s team of data scientists will continue to be based in Bath, UK and will work alongside 24i’s existing data team to further develop the company’s data offering which already includes quality of service metrics, content usage and royalty reporting capabilities.
Peter Gabriel said: “As the volume of content online grows, many consumers actually want freedom from too much choice. The Filter was born to help people find more of the content they want easily. When we began with The Filter, a personalised recommendation engine was a very new concept and small innovative independent pioneers played a critical role in evolving what is now data science. This nascent industry is now an established part of media and, with 24i’s backing, The Filter’s fantastic data team will be able to make a difference to a much wider audience, improving the user experience for millions more consumers around the world. We really like 24i’s goal of providing a full range of tools to serve both the consumer and the content provider and feel that will provide a wonderful home for everything we’ve created within The Filter”.
