C4 to launch real-time user recommendation

Channel 4 has announced that it will be launching a real-time user recommendation engine based on data gathered from its registered users, according to a report in Broadcast magazine.

At this year’s International Broadcasting Convention, the broadcaster’s chief technology officer Bob Harris said that the channel had been experimenting with real-time data processing – data which Harris says is much ‘richer’ than competitor Sky’s.

Harris said that Channel 4 is moving away from using historical data to instead capture real-time data – something which Harris claims no other big platform operators are experimenting with.

“It would be a mistake to assume that big data is all about ad targeting – I think we’re only at the beginning of what we’re going to do with this data,” said Harris.