Foxtel Upfronts: New Shows, Remote Voice Control, & Foxtel Media’s New Data Platform For Buyers

ICYMI, Foxtel Group held its virtual Upfronts today, with the Group unveiling a range of fun new stuff, including a new data platform for media buyers, Foxtel control voice command, new blockbuster shows, and perhaps most excitingly, a surprise appearance from Nicole Kidman.

If you didn’t catch the show, here’s everything you need to know about Foxtel in 2021:

Foxtel Media unveils new data platform for media buyers

Foxtel Media today announced FOXTEL Xplore, a new data platform for media buyers that provides rich data from over 8 billion viewing events per month by Foxtel subscribers.

FOXTEL Xplore is the only data source in market to include both Broadcast TV and streaming viewing data, from over 1.1 million IQ3/IQ4 set-top boxes and 1.2 million digital devices currently used by Foxtel Now and Foxtel Go customers.

Initially, Foxtel has partnered with Experian to enable data to be enhanced by over 300 Experian segments.

Foxtel Media CEO Mark Frain commented: “FOXTEL Xplore is a key element in bringing the collective smarts and growing scale of the Foxtel Group to advertisers, and uniting the power of all of Foxtel’s platforms into a powerful, intelligent video offering. We have unleashed the data from our 7.5 million viewers.”

“Like many within the industry we have been on a data transformation journey over last two years – and are more than thrilled to be able to say that, when this solution launches later this year, viewing and audience data from Foxtel Group’s platforms will be all in one place. Most importantly, it will be easily accessible to help advertisers supercharge their campaigns.”

Even without Kayo and Binge, the undertaking has involved the onboarding of 0.5 Petabytes of data into the platform, the equivalent of 23 million copies of Harry Potter and The Philosophers’ Stone. This will grow to 1TB a day once Kayo and Binge are integrated, expected to happen in 2021. The data exploration platform will allow users to:

• Visualise billions of viewer actions, making it easier to see what’s going on across the Foxtel platform.
• View audiences in aggregate, at demographic or segment levels, and see viewing across device and across platform.
• Run reports such as the shape of day, or channel, genre and program analyses, including trends over time.

Nev Hasan, Foxtel Media Executive Director of Agency Sales, commented: “Using FOXTEL Xplore we are already uncovering some fascinating insights into how viewers are engaging with Foxtel. For example, our digital-only subscribers on Foxtel Now and Foxtel Go, which account for over a third (36%) of the total BVOD minutes viewed in Australia, are just as highly engaged as our Foxtel linear base – watching 48 million minutes of content a day. And that’s before you include Kayo and Binge.”

“We’ve also been able to deep dive into some interesting viewer habits, for example finding that 40% of households with NRL fanatics, people who watch over half of all matches regardless of the teams involved, have also been regularly watching Keeping up the Kardashians. While the great majority of these households split viewing across devices or watch together as a family, 4.4% are one person households that watch on a primary device, demonstrating an equal interest in both League and the reality TV queens. It is this level of insight that we believe will provides the targeting options that are more closely aligned to client’s business goals and customer profiles.”

New & returning shows

Announced today, here are a bunch of new shows coming to Foxtel’s platforms:

The Undoing,

The Flight Attendant

The Third Day

The End

And old favourites that are returning:

His Dark Materials S2

Discovery of Witches S2

Succession S3

Real Housewives of Melbourne S5

Outlander S7

Love It Or List It Australia S4

Gogglebox S13 

Mr Inbetween S3

Wentworth final season

Raised by Wolves S2 

Foxtel launches remote Voice control

Foxtel today announced it had commenced a major software update for 1.1 million iQ3 and iQ4 customers, which together with the new Foxtel Voice Remote provides the ability to search, browse and navigate all with the touch of a button and the sound of their voice.

Voice control is the latest innovation by Foxtel continuing its commitment to provide customers with a premium experience for the best of TV and on-demand, all in one place.

With its smart voice recognition technology, customers can simply push the microphone button and speak a command to the Foxtel Voice Remote, enabling them to:

·       Search for a specific show, sporting team, actor, director, character or even use a famous movie quote from a film.

–        For example, “Good Will Hunting” will return the movie, while saying a famous movie quote like “may the force be with you” will show Star Wars movies, with over 500 movie quotes currently available.

–        Combination search commands are also available such as “action movies” and “just the ones with Tom Cruise”. 

–       Plus the Voice Remote understands the local lingo navigating with ease to sporting team nicknames like “Rabbitohs” or “Magpies” and recognising 10 major Australian accents.

·       Browse specific themes, genres and moods of content. For example, “show me Christmas movies”, “show me romantic comedy movies”, “show me air crash investigation shows” or “show me home renovation shows” will return a list of content.

·       Adjust volume, play, pause, rewind, skip ahead, channel change and schedule recordings.

Patrick Delany, Foxtel Group Chief Executive Officer, said: “Foxtel is known for its breadth and depth of content across movies, entertainment, lifestyle, documentaries and sport. We have more than 40,000 individual titles available including full season stacks, and we’ve had massive increases in titles available on demand. 

“It means we have great shows for every family member however with so much choice, finding it for the big screen hasn’t always been simple – try typing in a search for the multi-award winning “Chernobyl”.

“With the launch of our new user interface last year and now the Voice control, we are continuing to invest in innovation to reimagine people’s experience of Foxtel and ensure we provide a premium experience of the best of TV and on-demand, all in one place. 

The Foxtel Voice Remote is only active when the microphone button is pushed, rather than always being in listen mode waiting to be activated by a speech command, ensuring users can feel confident about the privacy within their home.