C4 still drilling for ‘oil’ in mobile

MIPDOC: UK pubcaster Channel 4 will continue to lead the way in collecting viewer data with a focus on the mobile market, the channel’s multi-platform commissioning editor for factual has told C21.

Speaking before his keynote at MipDoc this afternoon, Adam Gee outlined his plans for collecting audience data, which the channel’s CEO David Abraham last year described as “the new oil.”

Gee said he believed a broadcaster is still in a better position than a digital player to harvest such information because it has opportunities not available to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

“It’s to do with developing relationships with the audience, and gathering data in a way that is not only open but also a fair exchange with the viewer,” he said. “Having a loyal and committed audience whose movement you can measure and track gives you an option to rethink how advertising works and put a value on things that previously didn’t have a value.”

Gee has greenlit three apps to run alongside a second season of Embarrassing Bodies Live from the Clinic, which airs later this year. The channel is also planning a second run of Keo Films’ campaigning series Fish Fight, for which developments are the pipeline, he said.

He said: “Every year with Embarrassing Bodies I’ve used it as a platform to experiment, and that’s how Live from the Clinic came about last year.

“This year I want the team to focus on what Embarrassing Bodies mobile should look like. It’s a very different mobile world since we last focused on this in 2008, so we’ll be launching three Embarrassing Bodies apps that push the boundaries in different ways.”

The first, My Mole Checker, is already in the App Store with two more to follow. Gee estimates Channel 4 has saved the National Health Service £400,000 (US$640,000) with its online and mobile health checker systems by reducing hospital and doctor visits.

He also sought to allay fears over how people’s data will be used by the channel, where it will go and what control they will have over it after surrendering it to the channel.

Gee said: “There’s no paranoia providing it’s a fair exchange. There’s only paranoia when you’re not sure why the data is being asked for and you’re not getting anything back in return. The way the data is handled is very open; you will have very full control over it you can delete it, amend it and correct it as you like.

“We will have video human-language summaries of what the terms and conditions mean so that reality of the web, where everybody hits the agree box without reading it because they haven’t got a choice, won’t happen.

“All the time we’re looking to provide something in exchange for the data. It might be an online premiere, or a service that people want to use like My Health Checker. If you want people to register and continue to log in you’ve got to have something worth giving away.”