Case Study: Channel 4 achieves rapid, scalable big-data analytics and targeted ad monetization with Amazon Web Services

Channel 4 - Customer Case Study

Channel 4, the UK public-service broadcaster, faced rapidly growing volumes of largely unstructured web and VOD data as viewers migrated to tablets, mobiles, consoles and smart TVs. That surge outpaced its on‑premises analytics capacity and threatened its ability to make fast, data-driven decisions about commissioning, scheduling and monetizing content.

Channel 4 moved its analytics to AWS using Amazon EMR (on Intel Xeon-powered EC2) and built a Big Data control panel so analysts can spin up clusters, run Hive/Pig queries and model datasets on demand. What used to take eight months can now begin in 2.5 days (and in-session modeling in about 60 minutes), allowing analysis of 100% of the data, better audience profiling and targeted ads, reduced infrastructure cost and measurable increases in ad revenue and viewer engagement.

Channel 4

Sanjeevan Bala

Head of Data Planning & Analytics