AWS and Salesforce team up to combine direct-to-consumer video streaming and analytics

The combined offering is designed to create greater customization of user experiences, increase retention and be easily configurable for a variety of applications.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Salesforce have partnered to offer a new service for content distributors that combines the customer lifecycle management of Salesforce Customer 360 with AWS’ media and analytics capabilities “to help content distributors deliver more scalable, personalized viewer experiences.”

The result of the partnership is a direct-to-consumer video delivery platform that Salesforce said is simple to deploy, scale and personalize for individual customers, with the Added benefits of subscriber life cycle management.

“The Salesforce and AWS relationship brings together a comprehensive, industry-specific media offering designed for direct-to-consumer video and live streaming services. This allows content distributors to enhance their capabilities while also helping them rapidly launch new service offerings, such as subscription packages and product bundles,” said Salesforce VP and GM of Media & Entertainment & Media Cloud Christopher Dean.

Salesforce said that “some of the world’s most recognized brands” have already been using Salesforce and AWS’ combined technologies to increase retention and customer engagement, as well as reducing D2C streaming costs for content delivery companies.

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In particular, Salesforce cited NBC Universal as an existing customer that previously benefited from the combined technology of AWS and Salesforce. “Together now, this combined offering will enable content distributors of all shapes and sizes to build innovative, scalable, and profitable offerings for audiences to help meet consumer demand for content,” Salesforce said.

In its announcement, Salesforce cited three particular benefits that content distributors can find in its combined offerings.

Integrated and improved customer experiences

Salesforce said that personalized experiences drive new subscriber acquisition, as well as increasing retention and enable incremental revenue. As an example, it cites a streaming service recommending pay-per-view content and live streaming to customers flagged as being interested in certain topics.

Additional insights into viewer activities

Gaining deeper insight into subscriber engagement through clickstream actions or likes/dislikes of recommended content can be used to personalize which marketing offers customers receive, which Salesforce said is key to improving retention. As an example in this category, Salesforce cites a user whose engagement with fitness videos is dropping, so the AWS/Salesforce service can recommend classes from a favorite instructor in the hope of increasing engagement.

Customization

Content delivery networks that use the combined offering “can easily customize the experience, such as introducing and scaling content-driven commerce experiences and targeted ad placements,” Salesforce said. As an example in this third category, Salesforce said in-stream ad placement could be used to enable a customer to make a purchase without having to navigate away to an ecommerce page.

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Dean said that Salesforce and AWS plan to use this new offering to “inspire the industry to consider deeper integration between the subscriber lifecycle and D2C video delivery.” As with other cross-platform integrations, this one may be just what smaller content providers need to improve numbers.