Case study on how TiVo leverages in-memory analytics for real time analysis of marketing for consumer goods and services with leading brands across the world.

1. Case Study
Kognitio enables real-time complex media analytics and
advertising context for TiVo Research & Analytics
Analytics on tens of billions of events in seconds with NO DBA: Ease of use, flexibility,
performance and scalability helps TRA grow its business
“Kognitio gives us the chance to go beyond the confines of typical databases –
we can now run queries and answer them in sub-second response times, we
can do ad-hoc analyses ‘on the fly,’ and the scalability of the platform grows
The Challenge with our data volumes.”
Leading media and market research firm Brian Canning | Chief Technology Officer | TiVo Research and Analytics, Inc. (TRA)
required a technology that could quickly
match and analyze millions of households’
TV tuning data with consumer purchase data, Introduction boxes (whether they are TiVo or others) with
to enable their advertising clients to find the As television audiences diffuse over hundreds of buying behavior at the retail checkout counter.
right audience for advertised products. channels in the average home, brand advertisers As a direct benefit, advertisers, media agencies
struggle through the clutter to reach their target and cable and broadcast companies can use the
The Solution consumers. With the added complexity of time- detailed and actionable insights and intelligence
TRA implemented Kognitio to collect granular shifted TV viewing it also has become very dif- to support their media and creative decisions.
ad-viewing information from set-top units and ficult for networks or advertisers to know exactly This enables TRA clients – media, cable, TV
integrate it with detailed point of sale data, what they are getting for the money they spend. net­ orks, financial services, automotive and
w
producing customized reports in real-time. consumer packaged goods concerns – to show
TRA adds the missing element in the TV buying a quantifiable ROI for their marketing spend.
The ROI and selling system by bridging the gap between
Kognitio enables TRA to successfully meet TV audience and consumer purchase behavior. To offer this service, Media TRAnalytics™ records
demanding client SLAs by providing analytical TRA Media TRAnalytics® patented business various kinds of information from the channels
insights 300% faster, via comprehensive intelligence platform connects buyers and sellers and programs watched, as well as the actual
ad-hoc reports on full volumes of data in of TV to information that reveals what products advertisements that were viewed by households.
real-time. TV audiences are most likely to purchase. Moreover, it shows which advertisements
were viewed, whether the viewer skipped an
While sample data only provides statistical advertisement and at what point the viewer
estimates, the TRA approach enables highly skipped to or switched channels. Armed with
accurate media analytics. By doing so, TRA this data, Media TRAnalytics™ delivers the
clients enjoy an increased Return on Investment analyses to advertisers, broadcasters and media
(ROI) for campaigns and spend. That advertising buyers and planners. TRA’s customers can
effectiveness is obtained, through a massive determine which ads “hook” viewers, which
cross-correlation of data from dozens of sources, cause them to switch channels and which ads
leveraging the Kognitio Analytical Platform. cause them to win or lose in the battle to gain
Without the obfuscation of arbitrary aggregation, market share and to drive sales. Correlated with
it is possible to perform complex analytics on retail PoS data, TRA feeds this information back
large and complex data sets and still get down to the relevant marketing professionals so they
to granular detail with unprecedented and can maximize their ROI.
reliable speed. This type of precision takes
marketing ROI to a whole new level. TRA adheres to and exceeds all relevant guide-
lines regarding privacy and security in acquiring,
TRA managing and accessing this data. There is never
TRA allows organizations to measure the value a time when the viewing data is stored with any
of advertising by matching the advertisements data that would allow a household or any of the
received in a given home via TV and DVR set-top individuals in the household to be identified. TRA
www.kognitio.com

2. “Our incumbent platform forced us to compromise on the types of analysis we Overall, Kognitio was the chosen solution
could perform on the data without first performing complex offline analyses because it was the easiest to deploy, able to
load data from any and all sources the fastest,
of the data… some of these processes could take several days to complete,
run complex analytics on Big Data in real-time,
including running updates on the data. Database performance was seamlessly integrate with legacy systems/
becoming a hindrance to our business.” existing applications and was the most cost-
effective platform for future growth.
Brian Canning | Chief Technology Officer | TRA
Conclusion
has taken the initiative to invest in and secure ISO the TRA application built in .NET Visual Studio, Running cutting-edge analytics requires a
27001 certification. This certification indicates that through standard interfaces. cutting-edge solution. Organizations like TRA
TRA has passed a rigorous examination of their can’t rely on conventional database technology
information handling processes and has been Solution to enable innovative solutions for their business.
certified as being in compliance with the highest Kognitio took minutes to install on the initial In-memory, massively-parallel processing
standards in the industry. TRA is committed to instance – software, client tools and data. analytics enables the molecular granularity and
ensuring security and privacy in their operations. Ad-hoc queries for “on the fly” analysis were up colossal speed to fuel real-time data discovery.
and running with triple the performance of any
Challenge previous test, returning queries in under five Kognitio enables TRA to put extremely powerful
Offering this service requires a powerful analyti- seconds that previously took days to run. media analytics in the hands of market experts,
cal engine that can load data in real-time and without extensive IT administration. That
deliver analyses in seconds. TRA quickly reached Loading data into memory for real-time process- capability propels comprehensive ad-hoc reports
the limits of their previous solution, a parallelized ing enabled ETL flexibility and reduced the IT that run up to 300% faster on full volumes of
version of MySQL, which became too compli- effort related to data placement and administra- data in-real time. This cost-effective solution
cated to run, manage and administer; data had tion. The ability to do transformations in Kognitio empowers TRA to successfully meet demanding
to be split, loaded and synchronized manually. significantly increased workload capability and client SLAs, expand their offering easily and
efficiency. Kognitio saved time for the TRA focus on the core value they add as a leader in
TRA evaluated conventional appliance and operations team, avoiding the need for laborious media analytics.
column-store databases, running an extensive pre-processing and keeping the path between
proof-of-concept (POC) weighing across five the receipt of data and creation of insights on it.
distinct success criteria: “The professionalism and willingness
–– Ease of use and installation Leveraging industry-standard servers from a of Kognitio’s staff to make our
private, co-located hosted environment, TRA
–– Speed and simplicity of data load implementation a success and get us
can accommodate 5 TBs of data in-memory
–– Complex query performance and flexibility today and much more in persistent storage into production as quickly as possible
–– Effortless integration with existing ETL and for back-up. Owing to the lack of proprietary cannot pass by unmentioned. Their
.NET applications hardware requirement, initial deployment even assistance in helping us has been
began by reusing existing servers. This setup
–– Linear scalability second-to-none. We consider
enables TRA to grow that environment linearly,
They had to find a solution that would give in line with the needs of the business, secure in Kognitio to be a true partner.”
them the fastest processing time, immediate the knowledge their investment is safeguarded. Mark Lieberman | Chief Executive Officer | TRA
access to data and the ability to easily scale As data sets grow, there is no need for “fork-lift
incrementally as data volumes grew. The upgrades” – hardware is added incrementally
solution also needed to seamlessly support and performance scales.
About Kognitio USA www.facebook.com/kognitio
Kognitio is driving the convergence of Big Data, in-memory analytics 260 Madison Avenue
www.twitter.com/kognitio
and cloud computing. Having delivered the first in-memory analytical 8th Floor
platform in 1989, it was designed from the ground up to provide the New York, NY 10016 www.linkedin.com/company/kognitio
highest amount of scalable compute power to allow rapid execution
www.youtube.com/kognitio
of complex analytical queries without the administrative overhead of United Kingdom
manipulating data. Clients span industries, including market research, 3A Waterside Park info@kognitio.com
consumer packaged goods, retail, telecommunications, financial Cookham Road
services, insurance, gaming, media and utilities. Bracknell www.kognitio.com
Berkshire, RG12 1RB 1-855-KOGNITIO