Artificial intelligence tests yielding promising results: Corus CEO

OTTAWA — Corus Entertainment Inc. CEO Doug Murphy told an industry conference Thursday the company has been experimenting with artificial intelligence, including for cross-promotion of its content and ad placements. “About a year and a half ago, we were inspired to really make a commitment to artificial intelligence as a way to modernize how we operate,” Murphy said during a panel discussion at the International Institute of Communications (IIC) conference in Ottawa. Corus is currently using AI in seven different projects, he said, including in its legal department, for closed captioning and cybersecurity. He said the company has invested “millions and millions” into AI initiatives. That includes an initiative launched two months ago using AI to cross promote its content. Murphy said Corus usually has about four minutes from every broadcast hour to promote its other channels and TV shows. “We have a massive promotional muscle we can use… if we were to sell that inventory, for example, that’s hundreds of millions of dollars,” he outlined. “That is more art than science historically with broadcasters. Your marketing department would cross promote certain shows on other shows feel, like-minded female protagonists, for example,” he said. Murphy said using AI for this purpose yielded insights humans never could have reached. For example, while it would be logical to cross promote the spinoff from the legal drama The Good Wife, The Good Fight, to fans of the original series, AI identified less obvious cross-promotional opportunities. “We learned the attributes of people who love The Good Wife, also love our hit History show called Forged by Fire, which is about making blades and swords,” he said, adding that strategy worked. The company left the promotion for the second season of Chopped:Grillmasters entirely up to AI. “We knew where season one was. We knew how we promoted it last year, so we let the algorithm do all the promotional strategy for this season launch…not one human being touched it,” he explained. The AI delivered the same viewership using 85 per cent less advertising, Murphy said. “So imagine that, you just liberate a whole bunch of inventory that I can use for other promotions.” The company is also working on use of AI on video stories posted by its Global News, where the technology figures out which ads to use and where to place them, he said. He said that in combination with the automated ad buying platform the company is developing, “the AI piece of it really helps to look at the contextualization of advertising, which is important, but also the optimization of where we place those ads.” Data from set-top boxes and connected TVs will be key to such initiatives, and so will industry cooperation, Murphy said. “The distributors, the , the broadcasters, and the producers are all realizing we need to work together,” he said, adding he hopes industry will realize “sharing this data, in privacy-compliant ways, is a very smart business decision.” Murphy said the driver for its AI initiatives was competition from online giants. “We know if we don’t move fast, we’re going to get run over by those big massive unregulated internet companies that are in our space,” he said. He told the audience the company began exploring the AI space before the start of his company's “challenging” year, in which it has reported negative TV ad revenues in every quarter. “I don't quite know where it's going to pay off, but I know if I don't do it, I'm in big trouble,” he said. — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Ahmad Hathout at ahathout@thewirereport.ca

Artificial intelligence tests yielding promising results: Corus CEO

Broadcast | November 2, 2018

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Artificial intelligence tests yielding promising results: Corus CEO

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