Salesforce this week announced a new Media Cloud-related service that promises to streamline streaming content and live video subscription management and feature delivery. The new offering is intended for companies using Amazon Web Services (AWS) as their cloud content delivery platform.
It’s a new overlap for both long-time partners Salesforce and AWS. And it gives a home in the public cloud for Salesforce’s Media Cloud, its Artificial Intelligence (AI) -driven subscriber management, ad sales, and content management platform. Direct-to-consumer streaming services have seen a sharp rise in use and subscriber base since the beginning of the pandemic and have driven the rise of Over-the-Top (OTT) media services. Market projections estimate the video streaming market will continue to grow to reach more than $ 900 billion by 2028.
Salesforce said the service leverages AWS analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to help enable customer personalization along with customer lifecycle management, monetization, and targeted advertising. The goal? Reducing customer churn and providing customers with the content that they want with as little friction as possible.
The new service will help content deliverers rapidly launch new service offerings incorporating subscription and product bundles, said Christopher Dean, vice president and general manager of Media & Entertainment and Media Cloud at Salesforce.
“Attracting and retaining a diverse audience while delivering consistent, high-quality video is one of the key challenges content distributors face today,” said Dean.
The service marries Salesforce’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform and Media Cloud subscriber functions with AWS’s Direct-to-Consumer & Streaming services, or AWS D2C. The two companies provide similar services already to NBC Universal. Independently, AWS counts streaming media services like Netflix, Disney + and HBO Max among its D2C customers.
The service promises increased customer retention thanks to AI-drive subscriber engagement functions. It also sports scalable content-driven “commerce experiences” that marry content in a video stream to advertising featured products.
“As development continues, Salesforce will continue to work with AWS and inspire the industry to consider deeper integration between the subscriber lifecycle and D2C video delivery, identifying and engaging audiences to make monetization simpler and more cost effective,” said Dean.
Earlier this week Amazon announced plans to take its Local Zone services international. The company said it will open 32 worldwide Local Zones, which provide Amazon customers with edge computing, storage, database and other services – crucial for low-latency and high-bandwidth applications in entertainment, industry, and other markets.
