Ok, so I’ve been on a journey and it’s an extremely interesting one! Let me explain why.

So, I am a ‘newbie’ to world of TV but the speed and pace of the industry has swiftly swept me along.

My journey to enlightenment started with content discovery.  Audiences need the right tools and environment to search and discover, wherever they are and through whatever connected device that they are using.  But fundamental to this, is the (meta)data which sits in the background to aid and support this.

Metadata is the fuel which powers personalised search and recommendations.  Imagine a world without detailed synopses, film or programme information nor images/trailers – our viewing experience would be limited. Navigation and finding information would be tedious and constantly disturbed due to other sources having to be referred to. Thankfully today we have the data and supporting technology that provides us with a more knowledgeable interface.

But content discovery is transforming and the speed of change is occurring rapidly.  We are now increasingly watching content using VoD services and as an audience, we expect to be able to watch our favourite films or series at anytime.  The next observable change is the move to more image-enriched content. The use of trailers and pixel perfect images provide an easier mechanism for audiences to engage and recognise what is being presented to us.    And finally ‘provide me with the best possible experience’.   We are all used to seeing recommendations being presented, but now we expect a lot more from our search capabilities. The desire to have the same ‘online search’ experience has prompted the industry to invest more within semantics. This utilises and understands intent and contextual meaning of terms; considering location, variation of words, concept matching, and natural language queries to provide more relevant search.

And so what is next? Voice recognition software is being talked about as the next generation of search. Yes, you will be able to talk to your TV or tablet and tell it what you want to watch!  Sounds fab right? But it will be interesting to see how many people actually exploit this feature.  Voice recognition and biometrics software are currently built into most smartphones today, however usage appears low.  With more and more people watching content on the go, will we have a population of people saying out loud the name of their favourite TV programme or film? It’ll be interesting to see how this evolves.

But whilst the technological revolution continues, we continue to demand access to more content and are often left disappointed.  The Ericsson ConsumerLab report found that 50% of consumers who watch linear TV reported that they can’t find anything to watch on a daily basis. So what is going wrong? Are there too many options or are we just not being presented with what we want. I would suggest that the latter is the most prevalent.  This indicates that the industry now needs to work harder to attract, retain and personalise the viewers’ experience.

So what can help to support this challenge? Yes you’ve got it, it’s the ‘D’ word again – data.

The platforms which support personalised search require enriched data sets coupled with intelligent tagging.  For example, if you were searching for a scientific documentary on Einstein, you wouldn’t expect to see a fictional cartoon character also named ‘Einstein’ being presented as your programme of choice.

At this year’s IBC, we showed the power behind enriched data sets.  If you were lucky enough to grab a slot at our innovation showcase, we demonstrated how the use of subtitles can provide more granular search capabilities; i.e. by location, product, scene, mood and character information.

So finding that key scene (when the big reveal happens) will no longer be a massive effort nor 10 minutes of navigating! Imagine a sleek, intuitive and a more relevant experience.

The world of TV is evolving!

Jennifer Walker, Product Marketing Manager, Content Discovery