Astro to digitally profile consumers with the help of AI

Astro is looking to experiment on digital customer profiling using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning. This will be done in collaboration with Microsoft. The experiment was conducted in the Stadium Astro’s platform, and was designed to increase the capability of Astro’s business to evaluate and respond to each individual’s preferences in real time to effectively match supply with demand.According to Astro, the company hopes to now drive better economic outcomes for both consumers and advertisers.  The media company added that the digital customer profiling technology of Astro allows it to understand the interests of their consumers.Leveraging Azure’s cloud infrastructure, Astro’s big data solutions can crunch billions of hypotheses in seconds to ascertain what each consumers’ interests are, allowing them to personalize customer experiences in real-time.Ridhuan Sidek, chief digital and marketing officer, Astro said, “We, at Astro, are pursuing a Consumer First narrative to keep pace with the changing business landscape. One of our strategic initiative is the ability to adapt and respond better to the interests of our customers and this initiative was crucial to making it possible.”He added that the media company is constantly engaging and personalising content to meet the needs and interests of customers.“Over the year, we have built our capabilities in Artificial Intelligence, Data Sciences, Algorithms and Analytics within the company. The Digital Customer Profiling experiment was undertaken for a period of two months until August 2017 on our Stadium Astro platform to engage better with our audience,” he said. During this stage, Astro observed a significant improvement in the clickthrough rates across Stadium Astro’s content recommendations, indicating that more people were reading Stadium Astro’s content as they were more relevant.The task facing Astro was to autonomously understand the interests of the customer’s fast enough to adapt to their interests whilst they are still on Stadium Astro’s website. Through the new technology, the Astro team is able to predict the visitor’s interest with a certain level of statistical certainty. This is done in hopes of creating tailored content for each visitor on the Stadium Astro’s website based on their preferences and importantly, a more relevant user experience. The Azure platform’s flexibility and cost-effective model allowed Astro to customize and take view of infrastructure optimization considerations during the course of the project.Michal Golebiewski, chief marketing and operations officer, Microsoft Malaysia said, “Since Microsoft established its presence in Malaysia over 25 years ago, our technology has helped transform the way people work, learn, play and communicate. Microsoft has a long-standing relationship with Astro over the years, however, this is the first time Microsoft has worked so closely with Astro on a cloud based big data initiative. We are confident that our trusted cloud solutions will propel Astro’s digital transformation to enable them to deliver exceptional customer experience.”Astro worked together with Kasatria Technologies Sdn Bhd, a local MSC Status company and Microsoft partner to build the Digital Customer Profiling platform tailored to exacting specifications. Kasatria is a Technology Innovation Grant recipient from MDeC and have patents filed in both Malaysia & the US in the area of Digital Customer Profiling using Micro-Conversions.Dato' Ng Wan Peng, chief operating officer, Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation said, “Nowadays consumer’s lifestyle choices are increasingly digital, mobile and personalized, so industries must move fast to meet their expectations. We congratulate Astro and Microsoft on this partnership and we hope that with Astro taking the initial step, the Malaysian media and entertainment industry will follow suit and embrace digital transformation to stay in the game.”