UKTV chooses XroadMedia to power personalised experiences

UKTV Chooses XroadMedia to Power Personalised Experiences

VIENNA — UKTV, the award-winning British broadcaster owned by BBC Studios, has selected XroadMedia, the leading personalisation and content discovery specialists, to provide content personalisation capabilities for its new U streaming app.

Earlier this summer, UKTV rebranded its VOD service UKTV Play to U and its free to air channels to U&Dave, U&DRAMA, U&YESTERDAY and U&W, in a move designed to connect its portfolio of free channels and its streaming service to aid understanding and content discoverability amongst its viewers. UKTV’s focus is now on ensuring content can be presented on U effectively, delivering highly personalised viewing for each user.

XroadMedia is working with UKTV to improve user management by utilising smarter segments to drive even more engaging experiences for U’s millions of registered viewers at every stage of their lifecycle. This includes cold starts, ensuring that even new users will be able to quickly find something to watch that they will love.

XroadMedia is also working with UKTV to deliver a dynamic UI filled with personalised content rows, mixing editorial curation and automated personalisation to enrich the content discovery process. These include editorial banners featuring curated box promo assets tailored to individual preferences, a “New to UKTV” row highlighting recent additions aligned with the user’s interests and rows like “For You”, “Because You Watched” and “Most Popular in Category”, offering AI-driven recommendations based on viewing history, user profiles and more. These personalised rows will adapt in real-time, ensuring that each user’s homepage remains fresh, relevant and engaging with every visit to U – at any time and on any device.

To further optimise results for defined KPIs and A/B tests, the product and editorial teams are using XroadMedia’s advanced analytics tools to better understand and act on results and trends, helping to continuously refine personalisation use cases, ensuring optimal performance and maximising the value delivered to viewers.

Declan Clarke, Head of Digital Products, UKTV, said: “We are delighted to be working with XroadMedia to enhance the viewers’ experience of our U Streaming app. They understand our business and approach projects with innovation, creativity and enthusiasm.”

XroadMedia’s Chief Executive Officer, Adolf Proidl, adds, “We’re ecstatic to have been selected and to bring our cutting-edge personalisation technology to UKTV as they prioritise their viewers. This is a core value for us at XroadMedia and the main driver for us to work closely with our clients to help innovate and drive user engagement, increase viewer satisfaction and ultimately contribute to the platform’s growth and retention goals.”

The first phase of the project will go live in November, but XroadMedia believes that personalisation should go beyond the UI. Therefore, the next phase will look at additional ways to expand UKTV’s personalisation opportunities and use cases.

Meet the XroadMedia team to talk about this project and other personalization opportunities at IBC 2024 on stand 5.B23.