IFE C ONTENT D ELI V ERY
aircraftinteriorsinternational.com
108 MARCH 2020
TOP: SPAFAX IQ IS INTENDED TO
PROVIDE AN ONGOING PIPELINE
OF IFEC USAGE DATA FOR IFEC
SYSTEMS ACROSS AIRLINE FLEETS
RIGHT: MIGUEL FERREIRA, IFEC
MANAGER AT TAP AIR PORTUGAL
necessary for preparing the content for
inflight exhibition on that airline’s specific
IFE system. This content delivery cycle of
encoding, quality control, security and
integration takes from 45 to 60 days to
complete, and once the content is on board, the
minimum exhibition cycle is a calendar month.
But more than just the limos and Hollywood junkets
are becoming ephemeral – so too is the whole idea of
who chooses the content and how. And those choices are
now being made increasingly by the data analytics that
provide the airline and/or CSP with information based
on the actual viewing habits of passengers.
The criteria for a successful airline movie was once
that it contained nothing offensive to anyone in a
communal screening environment, but as most IFE
viewing today is on personal rather than communal
screens, the emphasis moves toward satisfying
the greatest number of individuals.
Today, CSPs like Touch Inflight Solutions and
Spafax, as well as IFES suppliers like Panasonic Avionics,
are providing airlines with tools that enable the capture
of passenger viewing data to guide the content licencing
decisions of tomorrow.
Spafax has a tool named ‘Spafax IQ’ that produces
a set of four dashboards with over 30 data visualisations
regarding movie and TV consumption, and measures
against KPIs. Data is retrieved from at least seven
sources, including internal APIs, third-party portals
and cloud data sources, and the information is then
“ Content choices
are being made
increasingly
by data
analytics”
Touch’s platform has
helped TAP Air Portugal to
invest in branded destination
content such as Riding Portugal,
which has more than a 90% playthrough
rate, according to Miguel
Ferreira, IFEC manager for the airline.
Ferreira says that it is important to
know passengers’ reaction to movies
not in terms of the number
of clicks, but in terms
of engagement.
/aircraftinteriorsinternational.com