Insight & strategy the streaming platform, and listeners accessing live radio broadcasts, audio Sounds, the broadcaster is sitting on a dataset of 45m accounts. The organisations data team, led by head of data David Teague, now spans 45 people across roles including marketing scientists, experimentation and optimisation teams, who support multivariate testing, and editorial analysts. North says the audiences team is essentially becoming the custodian of volume when it launched account into peoples behaviour while theyre using the online services, such as iPlayer. Thinking about how we make best use of that data, but integrate that within our broader understanding of the audience, has really profoundly changed the scope of For example, beyond the audience insights emerging from the data, it can be used in user segmentations, clustering and other methods to inform the products themselves. By feeding the products with data in this way, the aim is that products will become more personalised for example, informing customised recommendations of what to watch next. organisation is driving a change in the audiences teams investment in research services. North says it is spending more on analytical and its making the best use of the data it has available. While the BBC is spending less on did, it is still investing heavily in tracking its brand and reputation. Those things are very important to us, and we look to do that in the best also making more use of data, with econometric analysis or deeper analysis of our brand research. Were investing in the analysis of our primary research Cross-disciplinary working need to work more closely together across disciplines. This was key to the organisations launch of BBC Sounds in 2018, which won the audiences award at the 2020 MRS Awards. BBC Sounds was conceived by the research team, which described a platform that would identify what listeners wanted. Analytics and data science are used to understand the spend time for example, by informing the services recommendations engine. Alison Winter, head of audiences for radio and education, says the work of for Sounds. Quite early on, she explains, the team realised that it needed to work with data scientists and analysts much more closely to help the business that is, detail on what is happening inside the product itself. Researchers can then use datasets, understand what people are doing outside of the platform. This is so important in todays landscape, where, as Winter puts it, the BBC is competing with global competitors who have huge audiences and huge resources, and we need to be able to look outside and understand whats going on more Additionally, planners conducted market analysis, exploring what other forms of audio content were particularly popular by looking at sources such as the Apple podcast chart. All of us working together are able to help build the best product and content always been easy, but we have more 32 Impact ISSUE 34 2021_pp30-33 I&S Beeb.indd 32 18/06/2021 13:45