Swisscom has completed the deployment of Media Distillery’s Ad Break Distillery for its Replay Comfort ad-free product which enables viewers to avoid commercials in replay.
The Swiss telco has also gone live with EPG Correction Distillery to enhance user experience (UX) on its 50 most popular channels for the entire customer base of 1.6 million households subscribing to its blue TV service. The deployment of the Media Distillery solution supersedes a platform which Swisscom initially developed in-house.
Both solutions are part of Media Distillery’s Time Marker Suite, which harnesses AI and ML to automatically analyse broadcasts across multiple channels in real-time to identify the beginning and end of programmes, and also of the ad breaks within them. This capability allows operators of video platforms to enhance their catch-up and replay experiences across the entire lineup of content without being dependent on individual broadcaster data, according to Media Distillery.
“What we have seen from our early initiatives in providing ad-free experiences is that customers’ Net Promoter Score (NPS) for the ad-free product is significantly higher than for other products. That’s important for us and that’s what binds the customer to our platform. With Media Distillery’s Ad Break Distillery, we can be confident that this much-appreciated seamless ad-free experience can be enjoyed by more customers,” said Philipp Wüthrich, Head of TV and Smart Products Backend Software Development at Swisscom.
While some broadcasters include ad markers in their transmissions, most do not, and this is where Media Distillery’s Ad Break Distillery comes in. With the solution, Swisscom can identify the placement of ads, and enable skipping for the channels which don’t provide ad break markers.
