Blog
Mar 14, 2025

How data and AI are transforming the cinema industry

Cinemas bear a wealth of rich transactional and moviegoer data, and we aim to deliver solutions that empower the many layers of cinema operations to make the most of it through Vista’s deeply connected ecosystem.

Vista Group has long harnessed the data generated by exhibitors through serving guests, undertaking marketing and operating cinemas. We convert this data into insights, make it actionable with our solutions and empower clients to react faster, make more informed decisions, benefit moviegoers and drive performance.

Data-driven decision making

Overlooking their entire circuit, executives must remain connected and informed about their operational performance. Oneview unites data from across Vista, Movio, and Numero, combining real-time admissions and box office, full F&B performance, loyalty, and other essential KPIs, from the circuit to the site level to each specific showtime. With this complete picture in the palm of their hand (or on their desktop), cinema leaders are surfaced opportunities to help make informed, timely decisions that demonstrably move the dial.

This deep trove of data isn’t just surfaced in productised form in Oneview. It is stored in Vista’s full-fidelity, real-time data warehouse, Horizon. This allows exhibitors to extract data deep from the source and create custom dashboards that address their unique requirements.

As technology evolves, we are always looking for more innovative opportunities, uncovering new ways to empower data-driven decision making across the industry.

By harnessing AI and Machine Learning, we recently introduced new forecasting calculations to enhance cinemas’ budgeting and planning with Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and Churn rate forecasting, visible in Oneview. These forecast calculations showcase loyalty members’ likely spend and predicted visitation rates, empowering cinemas to plan for the future.

In addition to prediction, these calculations provide movie marketers in Movio EQ with targetable audiences of high-value and at-risk loyalty members, so you can not only plan for the future, but actively shape that future as well.

AI is transforming personalisation and targeting

AI and machine learning have powered movie marketing decisions for years. With Movio’s Propensity Algorithm, marketers have been uncovering recommended audiences to target, and matching content to moviegoers’ personal tastes for nearly a decade.

New AI-powered features are providing powerful segmentation opportunities to look at your loyalty base in different ways, find the right audience, and easily create the right content to appeal to their tastes, demographics, and behaviours. By identifying moviegoers forecasted as likely to churn, or high value loyalty members, marketers uncover segmentable audiences to target, and deliver real value by doing so.

Personalisation is likewise gaining new tools with the aid of AI. With Dynamic Content, movie marketers can easily surface different content to their segmented audiences that appeal to each audience’s personal tastes, and new generative AI features such as First Draft are making it faster and easier for users to create 1:1 personalised campaigns at scale.

To best push personalisation, cinemas need to understand their moviegoers as well as possible.

Through extensive research, our Data Science team identified four cinema-centric personas—distinct groups with similar behaviours and values—that moviegoers reliably fall into. Personas provide EQ users with a new way to easily understand their moviegoers’ tastes and behaviours, making another powerful launching point for targeted campaigns at scale. By combining all of these tools for segmentation and personalisation, marketers can create even more effective, efficient campaigns powered by data and AI.

Building a connected future across the industry

Work with AI is uncovering new and improved operational opportunities across the cinema industry, from the segmentation and assistive tools new to EQ, to Oneview’s AI Podcast summary for delivering executives an overview of their key insights, and much more.

Innovating with new technology continues to excite us, and the opportunities we have unlocked by bringing the entire Vista suite together into a connected ecosystem aren’t finished yet.

At CinemaCon this year, we’re showcasing all manner of new and upcoming innovations from the Vista roadmap, through data and AI, digital, loyalty, pricing, kitchens, sentiment and intent, and more.

To see the latest in how data and AI are transforming our industry, join us at our Spotlight Session Unlocking Data Potential, don’t miss the AI in Exhibition panel, and stay on top of everywhere you can find Vista Group at CinemaCon.

Written by

Vista Group

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