Disney

Data integration post-acquisition

When Disney acquired the mobile game developer Playdom, it needed to integrate its consumer data into the greater Disney data ecosystem.

The DEPT®/DATA team helped integrate the game developer’s data into Disney’s, giving Disney a comprehensive view of its users.

A gaming studio acquisition

Playdom was a gaming studio that built games for Facebook and other social media platforms. With 42 million active monthly players, Disney saw huge potential to promote their stories and characters with social gaming.

In 2010, Disney acquired Playdom and started integrating their mobile games into its portfolio. However, Playdom’s outdated data system was slowing down the integration.

Playdom had two data warehouses and an unwieldy Excel-based lifetime value (LTV) model, making marketing synergy difficult.

The need for brand integration

Whenever a company buys another one, the big question becomes: What are my customer segments now that I have this new audience? Finding the answer to this question can be difficult if the acquired organisation doesn’t have a modern data system.

This was the situation for Playdom. They had multiple data warehouses and used an Excel sheet to calculate important marketing metrics. Plus, too many people manually managed these environments, creating duplication efforts and inefficiencies.

Data automation

DEPT® helped Disney get control of Playdom’s data by modernising its data management.

We first unified their data warehouses, combining their big data system with a custom-built application to manage data pipelines. This system fed a new semantic layer and allowed them to run queries quickly.

Then, we automated the customer segmentation process with a Ruby application. This new model had a single interface and pointed to the new semantic layer, so their LTV calculations used reliable and up-to-date data.

With the new applications, Disney was able to find efficiencies across their marketing teams and catapult the launch of their games in conjunction with their movie release schedule. Most noteworthy, Disney successfully promoted the game “Marvel Avengers Alliance” to its Marvel-loving audience segments.