HKET: Providing more compelling news content with data analytics and generative AI
Improves ad targeting accuracy rate through analytics insights generated by BigQuery
Reduces data analytics costs by 50% with Google Analytics 4 and BigQuery
Supports hourly updated data visualization for faster decision-making with Looker Studio
Enhances content creation productivity by automating repetitive tasks with Gemini API
Data analytics performance up by 10X
By migrating its data warehouse to Google Cloud, HKET is able to enhance its data analytics performance by 10X to deliver advertisements to advertisers' targeted audience more accurately and quickly while tapping on generative AI to further improve its editorial team’s productivity.
By migrating its data warehouse to Google Cloud, HKET is able to enhance its data analytics performance by 10X to deliver advertisements to advertisers' targeted audience more accurately and quickly while tapping on generative AI to further improve its editorial team’s productivity.
We needed a cloud data warehouse that supports high-performance data analytics, so that we could provide compelling content and realize accurate ad targeting based on data insights. Google Cloud provides the most cost-effective data analytics solution on the market.
Irene Hui
IT Services Director, HKET
Hong Kong Economic Times (HKET) is an important information source for many people living in Hong Kong. Starting as a financial daily newspaper publisher, HKET has expanded its services from print media to more than a dozen digital platforms providing information about finance, lifestyle, and employment. hket.com, uliftstyle.com.hk, and ctgoodjobs.hk, the digital platforms of HKET Group, currently has five million monthly unique visitors.
Dedicated to becoming one of the most influential information providers in Hong Kong, HKET accumulates its popularity by providing unique content, such as investment insights, property data, and lifestyle guides.
“The uniqueness of our content is our greatest strength,” says Irene Hui, IT Services Director at HKET. “Our editorial team therefore needs to closely follow the latest trends and quickly deliver accurate information to our readers.”
HKET relies on data analytics to support targeted advertising across its online platforms and help its editorial team understand its readers’ preferences. The company used to leverage an open-source tool to monitor its website visitors’ reading behavior and then analyze the data on a cloud platform. However, as the amount of its data increased, the costs became staggering, and the analytics performance was proved insufficient.
To overcome the challenges, the HKET team decided to look for new tools in late 2023. It switched to Google Analytics 4 to log user behavior data of its websites. Considering the seamless integration between Google Analytics 4 and BigQuery, as well as the latter’s high query speed, HKET eventually chose to move its data warehouse to Google Cloud.
“We needed a cloud data warehouse that supports high-performance data analytics, so that we could provide compelling content and realize accurate ad targeting based on data insights,” explains Hui. “Google Cloud provides the most cost-effective data analytics solution on the market.”
Delivering 10X higher analytics performance with 50 percent less costs
With the technical support of the Google Cloud team, HKET smoothly moved its data warehouse to BigQuery within 90 days. Before the migration, Google Cloud and Microfusion held a five-day development workshop for HKET’s IT team to jump-start its journey on the new cloud platform. Danny Tung, Associate IT Director at HKET, says that during and after the migration, whenever the HKET team encounters technical issues or seeks advice for architecture design, it always quickly receives the assistance it needs.
“Customer engineers of Google Cloud and Microfusion have greatly facilitated our use of Google Cloud. We’re able to troubleshoot as fast as possible and get extensive information about best practices and suitable tools when we’re planning new projects,” he adds.
Deploying our data warehouse in BigQuery for analytics has significantly changed the way we work. Not only can we retrieve more useful insights that are beneficial to our services, but our data can also be utilized more efficiently and effectively through other Google Cloud tools.
Danny Tung
Associate IT Director, HKET
With its new data warehouse in BigQuery, which according to Tung delivers 10X faster query speed than HKET’s previous data tool, the team can now analyze 5X more data. As more data is analyzed, the analytics results are more nuanced and precise, resulting in higher ad targeting accuracy rate of HKET’s advertising system.
Before moving to Google Cloud, HKET needed to pay underlying infrastructure costs for its data processing solution. Now, since Google Analytics 4 and BigQuery are both serverless tools and can be seamlessly integrated, the costs of data collection, storage, and analytics are reduced by 50 percent.
Driving up content creation productivity with Gemini API
After setting up its new data warehouse in BigQuery that enables faster and broader analytics, HKET is ready to expand its use of Google Cloud tools to further improve its operations and services. In early 2024, its IT team started building several microservices that facilitate writing and editing using Gemini API through Vertex AI. Leveraging the generative AI capabilities of Gemini API to automatically proofread articles, correct typos, and summarize articles or video transcriptions, HKET’s editorial team can now spend more time on crafting quality original content for its readers.
“The industry-leading generative AI technology of Gemini API boosts our editorial team’s productivity by automating repetitive tasks,” says Tung. “On top of that, it doesn’t require additional model training like the AI tool we tested before. Gemini API can directly meet our needs with some simple prompt engineering.”
Broadening applications of data analytics and generative AI for better user experience
With the data analytics and generative AI capabilities of Google Cloud, we’re able to provide more compelling content and faster services with less manual effort. We’re very happy about what we have achieved.
Irene Hui
IT Services Director, HKET
Next, HKET will utilize BigQuery and Gemini API to continue improving the user experience that it provides. It plans to run real-time analytics in BigQuery for even more timely insights and leverage BigQuery data canvas to enable faster data searching with natural language. The company will launch a new chatbot powered by Gemini API on its lifestyle apps in the third quarter of 2024, allowing users to ask more complex questions like travel planning. To better connect its new services with its data pipelines in Google Cloud, HKET will deploy them in Google Kubernetes Engine and Cloud Run.
Hui says, “With the data analytics and generative AI capabilities of Google Cloud, we’re able to provide more compelling content and faster services with less manual effort. We’re very happy about what we have achieved, and we’ll expand and deepen our use of Google Cloud to continue enhancing the user experience of our media services.”
Hong Kong Economic Times Holdings Limited (HKET Group) is a diversified multi-media company, providing quality content and services in business domains of finance, property, lifestyle, human resources and education, across a range of digital media and other platforms. Apart from newspapers, magazines and associated digital businesses, HKET also run a financial news agency, information and solutions business, as well as operating in businesses of recruitment advertising, training, and various lifestyle platforms.
Industries: Media & Entertainment
Location: Hong Kong
Products: BigQuery, Gemini API, Looker Studio, Vertex AI
About Google Cloud Partner- Microfusion
Microfusion is a Taiwanese cloud service provider founded in 2007 focused on offering one-stop solutions and consulting with its professional architects and maintenance team to assist customers in cloud migration, IT infrastructure modernization, and data analytics. Having worked with more than 2,000 customers from public and private sectors, Microfusion is a top service provider for digital transformation across various industries.
