ThinkAnalytics provides recommendations for Astro’s NJOI Now OTT service

ThinkAnalytics deployed for Astro’s NJOI Now video streaming service

LONDON and LA — ThinkAnalytics™, Emmy® award-winning developer of the world’s most deployed multi-platform TV search and recommendations engine, today announced that Astro, a leading Southeast Asian content and customer-focused company, has gone live with the ThinkAnalytics Recommendations Engine on the newly launched NJOI Now free video streaming service. NJOI Now lets anyone in Malaysia view content for free on mobile devices and online – including live sports, breaking news and a choice of more than 2,200 movies and drama box sets.

The ThinkAnalytics launch follows successful deployments on Astro’s pay-TV DTH platform in June 2016, and the Astro GO app (formerly known as Astro on the Go) in January 2017. All three ThinkAnalytics deployments run in the cloud.

Initial data shows that, on average, over 70% of viewing on both the pay-TV DTH and Astro GO platforms is driven by ThinkAnalytics’ content recommendations. Astro has also seen VOD consumption treble since the introduction of the recommendations engine and the new VOD UI in June 2016.

Astro believes personalized TV is key to its future. The operator selected ThinkAnalytics to help attract, engage and retain more consumers by using machine learning and predictive analytics across four languages to suggest relevant, personalized content. Deep viewing insights are gained by tracking real-time viewing behaviour, individual preferences, topical trends, social channels and more. For example, the platform learns consumers’ likes/dislikes by tracking what content has been viewed in its entirety, and what has been abandoned before the end.

As of 31 May 2017, the Astro GO app has been downloaded 3.6 million times and has 1.3 million registered users. Astro launched recommendations on the app in January 2017 and then rebranded in March 2017 with a new name, Astro GO. Data from the first four months of 2017 shows that the average user spent 186 minutes per week watching content on Astro GO.

Liew Swee Lin, Chief Commercial Officer, Astro, commented, “Since we went live with ThinkAnalytics on our DTH platform and Astro GO app we have seen a huge uptick in viewing – and an average of over 70% of viewers choosing to watch content proposed by the recommendations engine. We expect the ThinkAnalytics platform to have the same positive impact on NJOI that it’s had on DTH and Astro GO.”

“Astro’s approach to offering personalized viewing on any screen is proving to be incredibly successful and is reflected in its growing customer base. Our search and recommendations engine gives customers like Astro a fast return on investment. It not only boosts the number of channels viewed, but also increases overall weekly viewing times and is demonstrated to positively impact customer loyalty,” said Peter Docherty, Founder and Chief Technology Officer, ThinkAnalytics.

The Astro GO and NJOI Now apps are available for download from the Google Play Store and Apple Store for tablet/smartphones or consumers can watch online.

Across the globe the ThinkAnalytics Recommendations Engine now serves over 75 billion recommendations a month and is available as a cloud service or on premise.