CBS partners with AI insights firm Canvs

CBS has partnered with artificial intelligence insights company Canvs to get a read on how shows, characters, plot lines and other topics are performing.

The US network will adopt Canvs’ AI-powered emotional analysis platform, Canvs Surveys, allowing it to automate the coding of open-ended responses to survey questions and benchmark the potential future success of programmes.

CBS’s Television City Research Center in Las Vegas already conducts over 6,000 individual surveys during pilot-testing alone and the Canvs deal will allow it increase the number of insights it can obtain and to contextualise survey answers.

The deal is designed to give CBS a more meaningful understanding of how audiences think and feel about content and ads across linear, digital and social platforms.

“Working with Canvs’ AI platform helps us speed up our research processes and gain more accurate measures about viewers, while also allowing us to dimensionalise and contextualise survey insights in new and valuable ways,” said Radha Subramanyam, chief research and analytics officer at CBS Television.

Canvs CEO and founder, Jared Feldman, said: “CBS’s investment in our AI-driven platform is an investment in better understanding how people feel and what they think about. We’re thrilled to help CBS utilise those findings to make more informed decisions about entertainment and advertising experiences.”

Canvs’ Surveys product is based on the analysis of trillions of words, phrases, and expressions over time, enabling researchers to ask better questions, extract meaningful signals, and tell stories that transform insights into action.

Canvs uses patented semantic AI and machine learning systems to understand how people feel, why they feel that way, and the business impact created for brands, agencies, and media companies. Its clients also include Comcast, Fox, Turner and Sony Pictures.

For more on AI use in the broadcasting space, click to read DTVE’s September 2018 long read, ‘Broadcasting in the age of AI’.