The traditional media business model relied almost exclusively on advertising revenue. Over time, subscription models became a powerful revenue driver for both newspapers and cable/satellite companies. However, new entrants have challenged these traditional media revenue models.

Although media companies remain strong due to their ability to both create and curate content, other industries are creating entertainment offerings to drive their growth. Furthermore, new market entrants have harnessed the ‘digital advantage’ and are successfully aggregating and delivering content directly to the consumer in a B2C transactional relationship. This increased pressure on media companies to compete and remain relevant has come from the consumer’s love affair with devices and the desire to be connected and entertained – anywhere, anytime on any device.

All of these factors present media businesses with challenges – but these challenges also bring enormous opportunity. Fundamental to a successful outcome is identifying key trends, leading over following and innovating from a position of strength that media owners possess.

• Improve Sales Capabilities
• Enhance Efficiency & Business Insight

Media companies want the ability to deliver engaging customer experiences by delivering content & services to consumers across different channels and devices. New monetization models and non-traditional competitors threaten leaving them out of the transformation to a multi-screen world and alternatively delivery channels (OTT etc). All of the content is ultimately rendered on a device (PC, phone, slate, Xbox or TV) it is the consumers engagement and interaction that defines the functionality and richness of the content immersion experience. Media organizations increasingly focus on multi-screen deployments and seek to monetize each screen in a consistent, predictable, scalable and manageable way.

• Streamline Content Creation
• Multi-format Multi-channel Distribution

The digital era is creating new ways to interact with content and it is evolving a new type of consumer. This is having a disruptive effect on discovery and navigation.

The proliferation of smart devices coupled with the rise of Over-The-Top services underscores the need for traditional media organizations to actively transform their infrastructures and business models to incorporate the anytime, anywhere and any device content delivery paradigm.

In this transforming media landscape, media & cable companies must engage audiences with immersive content experiences and leverage the personalization capabilities that new technologies provide to effectively and efficiently monetize those audiences

• Attract, Engage and Monetize Audiences
• Speed Time-to-market & Flexibility

Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI) solutions for media companies help to provide decision makers and working teams with the business insight they need to respond quickly to changes in audience demand and business needs. These solutions are based on the Microsoft Business Intelligence platform, adding industry-specific Extraction, Transformation and Loading (ETL) modules, data cubes, reports, and dashboards which are available from Microsoft partners.

• Business Intelligence for Media & Cable