How NBCUniversal made gains in efficiency and viewership

"[Amplitude] allows us to move faster, experiment quicker, and understand our users better to take more immediate action to improve our customer experience" - Josh Snow, former VP of Product at NBC Universal

With insights from Amplitude, media giant NBCUniversal is making data-driven decisions that deliver significant gains in viewership.

With a portfolio encompassing television networks, motion pictures, production companies, theme parks, and digital businesses, NBCUniversal has come a long way from its early roots in broadcasting to become an entertainment and media juggernaut. Data has played an increasingly central role in that transformation, shaping the company's strategic decisions, mainly as it battles for viewers in the streaming wars. But as NBC's thirst for user insights grew, so did its demand for more sophisticated analytics, stretching its data science team thin. Enter Amplitude.

Jay Khavani, previously NBC's Director of Product Analytics, said that the decision to use the platform yielded significant time-saving and productivity benefits, leading to viewership and retention innovations. Khavani estimated that data analysts had recuperated 25 percent of their day, QA engineers 10 percent, and data engineers 5 percent to focus on more complex problems, personalized discovery algorithms, and optimizations, work that can be a competitive differentiator for NBC.

↑3X Increase in D7 retention

↑2X Increase in conversion to views

↑5% Increase in viewership

In addition, when NBCUniversal decided to go digital with a new app experience, they knew there were strategic questions they would need to answer before, during, and after the launch. 

From the launch, teams had a complete real-time view of the customer experience. With these insights, they could quickly run experiments and release changes to the in-app experience, including the homepage and video preview feature.

As a result, their app homepage changes boosted viewership by 10% and increased seven-day retention by 2x. And the video preview feature grew video-start conversion by 36%.

What were the insight, action, and outcome? Take a look by clicking below.

Now, it’s your turn! Here are some questions for you:

•  Given NBC Universal's call-out related to productivity gains, how has Amplitude enabled the same for you?

• Regarding retention, as described as a win for NBC Universal, where have you intentionally analyzed for retention and then taken action on your product?  What were the results?

• NBC Universal was looking to increase viewership, knowing it was necessary to decrease competitive risk in the streaming world. How are you using Amplitude in support of competitive differentiation?  What insights have you used to take differentiating action?

Comment below with your expertise. We can't wait to hear about the insights you uncovered!

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