Exclusives

The seventh season of the No. 1 show in TV, AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” is well underway, and, as usual, it’s the biggest ad cash cow for the network.

But, if you decide to start counting the ads not only seen during the show, but also around any show on AMC, you might notice something a little odd: AMC Networks is its own largest client, using approximately one-sixth of its own advertising space to promote its own programming.

There’s a reason for this, according to Vitaly Tsivin, SVP of business intelligence for AMC Networks, speaking at the recent IBM World of Watson event: the use of cognitive computing is helping AMC make smart marketing decisions, and running its own promos is having the desired outcome, bringing more viewers to the right platforms.

“Advertising is the bread and butter for AMC Networks, and managing our inventory is key to our success,” Tsivin said. The marketing and sales teams wanted to improve ad performance using three metrics, reach, frequency and cost per impression, and they’re doing it using Watson analytics. With minimal training, the use of such analytics can increase research ad and marketing effectiveness 10-fold, according to Harriet Green, VP and GM of Internet of Things, commerce and education for IBM.

“Imagine you have one person reached once, and one person reached nine times, and the average desirable frequency is five,” Tsivin said. “What have you achieved? The people reached only once are underserved, and there’s a low chance of conversion. And the people reached nine times are borderline [being] annoyed.

“Our data optimization algorithms are designed to increase reach, keep CPMs reasonably low, and most importantly, achieve the best frequency of distribution.

The optimization gains are real: AMC Networks is using IBM Watson to look at freeing up and reallocating as much as 30% of its promotional tune-in ads to other areas of growth for the network, including over the top and VOD. “And as we become more sophisticated, we’re able to help our advertising partners get as much benefit as we do,” Tsivin said.

“As we deploy IBM’s advanced analytics, it helps us achieve our main objective: improve the business. Internally we call it the bridge, the bridge from intelligence to business insights to business impact,” he added. “We’re arming decision makers with easy access to insights, so they can find their own ‘ah-ha’ moments, being subject matter experts in their areas. We’re also doing everything we can to deliver game-changing insights on a silver platter, using complex analytics, and there are ways to enhance both.”

Immediate access to data visualization is crucial: AMC data researches used to spend 80% of their time “manipulating and massaging data” and only 20% “doing actual research work.” Today they’re spending more of their time doing the latter vs. the former.

Green touted the fact that Watson and AI help companies organize data in real time, and applies reason to the information, learns what it means, and suggests a specific course of action.

“No matter your industry, no matter your profession, we all need the right information, at the right time, to make truly confident, well-judged, productive decisions,” she said. “But all of us are overwhelmed. There is just so much information. And it’s getting harder and harder to separate the signals from the noise.”