ThinkAnalytics gets a fix on FAST

ThinkAnalytics is a long-time supplier of metadata and AI technologies that help traditional pay-TV providers and streaming service providers develop and build recommendation engines that can bump up usage and engagement.

In tandem with the recent NAB 2024 show in Las Vegas, ThinkAnalytics announced that it is putting more emphasis on the free, ad-supported streaming television (FAST) market via a new product called "ThinkFast," a FAST channel scheduler that is complemented by generative AI (GenAI) technologies in tandem with ThinkAnalytics' metadata capabilities. The idea is to cut down the manual, labor-intensive process (and the overall costs) of curating and scheduling FAST channels.

"There's a lot of interest around this," Marc Aldrich, the new worldwide CEO of ThinkAnalytics, explains in this podcast recorded at NAB. "FAST channels have been one of the fastest-growing areas in our business over the last two years."

The GenAI element, he says, can help partners optimize their content libraries and quickly program and personalize their various FAST channels.

"We believe that this will make a significant impact from an ecosystem perspective over the next year or so," Aldrich adds. "We've had very good conversations with partners like Amagi, Frequency, OTTera and others."

8 billion 'transactions'

Aldrich is a former and long-time Cisco Systems exec who most recently ran AWS' media entertainment business. He estimates that ThinkAnalytics' customers use the company's software, which underpins recommendation engines and some advanced advertising use cases, to support about 475 million subscribers worldwide. That translates into about 8 billion "transactions" per day, Aldrich notes.

Here's a snapshot of our discussion (click the closed captioning button in the player for a lightly edited transcript):