Swisscom choses Media Distillery to power ad-free offering

Switzerland’s telecom operator Swisscom has deployed Media Distillery’s AI-powered Ad Break Distillery solution to power its Replay Comfort ad-free product offering which enables viewers to avoid advertisements.

The operator went live with the tech outfit’s EPG Correction Distillery to enhance user experience across its 50 most popular channels for its blue TV customer base of 1.6 million households, according to Swisscom.

EPG Correction Distillery and Ad Break Distillery  are part of Media Distillery’s Time Marker Suite. Both solutions harness AI and ML to automatically analyse broadcasts across multiple channels in real-time to identify the beginning and end of programmes, and also of the ad breaks within them, says the AI tech provider. Media Distillery said this allows operators of video platforms to enhance their catch-up and replay experiences across the entire line-up of content without being dependent on individual broadcaster data.

Leveraging Ad Break Distillery, Swisscom can identify the placement of ads, and enable skipping for the myriad channels which don’t provide ad break markers, says Media Distillery.

Philipp Wuethrich, head of TV and smart products backend software development at Swisscom, said: “What we have seen from our early initiatives in providing ad-free experiences is that customers’ Net Promoter Score (NPS) for the ad-free product is significantly higher than for other products. That’s important for us and that’s what binds the customer to our platform. With Media Distillery’s Ad Break Distillery, we can be confident that this much-appreciated seamless ad-free experience can be enjoyed by more customers.”