Will Kreth, Executive Director of the Entertainment
Identifier Registry Association (EIDR), is in the epicenter of the content
labeling storm. Being able to completely track a piece of content no matter
where it airs and how it is consumed is the Holy Grail of programmers and
advertisers. EIDR, which stands for Entertainment Identifier Registry, is a universal unique identifier system for movie and television assets.
Charlene Weisler: EIDR
has been advocating labeling for many years. What is moving it forward now?
Will Kreth: Economics.
As the volume of content in distribution continues to increase around
the world, the outdated systems of manual workflows, title matching,
reconciliation and attribution of viewership / usage are unsustainable. There’s
a quote from Clyde Smith, formerly SVP of New Technology at Fox Networks -
"If you can’t identify it, you can’t automate, operationalize or measure
it; and if you can't measure it - you can't monetize it.” He said it about six years ago, and it’s
still true. The pathway to sustainability begins with labeling all content in a
unique, persistent and machine-readable format, which is what the alpha-numeric
EIDR ID provides.
Charlene Weisler: What
is the current state of labeling?
Will Kreth: Today we see labeling happening in a variety of
ways, often with proprietary methods that are designed for specific
purposes. Moving towards a single
standard identifier, which can be embedded once and then used for any number of
tracking and identification needs provides a ubiquity and simplicity that has
been missing in media and entertainment.
Whether it is a new TV series for 2019, a film production
taking off in 2021, or a new indie short premiering at the Tribeca Film
Festival this fall, we encourage everyone within the media and entertainment
ecosystem to begin registering new titles with EIDR ID’s as soon as the
greenlight on the project is given. The bottom-line is: earlier the better. If
EIDR ID’s are attached to content from the beginning of the project, industry
leaders, agencies and all parties involved will have a better understanding of
what content is being referenced throughout its lifecycle.
Existing titles are also being registered with EIDR to take advantage
of the benefits of this persistent identifier as content continues to be made
available across an ever-growing distribution network.
Charlene Weisler: Do
you see the industry coalescing around a standard?
Will Kreth: Yes. And while it’s taken a few years, the
dynamic power of open standards to drive supply-chain automation has
incontrovertible precedents in packaged goods (with UPC/EAN codes) and in books
(with ISBN). We are proud to be part of the TAXI Complete (Trackable Asset
Cross-Platform Identification) initiative, which was recently published as a
pair of open standards by SMPTE to embed asset tracking into both content and
advertising using an audio watermark. This initiative, led by CIMM (Coalition
for Innovative Media Measurement) was started in 2013 for the purpose of
setting standards and identifying the most effective means of multi-channel
asset tracking.
Charlene Weisler: How
will standards in labeling impact media?
Will Kreth: I’ve been chatting recently with folks from the
book publishing world and the CPG (consumer packaged goods) industries - and
they can’t imagine a world without unique IDs in their international supply
chains. The only surprising thing about film and television is that it has
taken until this decade to see global, non-proprietary IDs grow in adoption.
The ability to embed standardized identifiers throughout the
media ecosystem will have a significant impact on the efficiency of cross-media
workflows for both media companies and marketers. Television networks and
digital content publishers will be able to use these unique IDs to more
effectively create and manage integrated multiscreen experiences. The standards
will also replace the need for legacy title matching processes and ease
numerous inefficiencies in the cross-platform video distribution and
measurement workflow.
Charlene Weisler: Is
there a difference in ad and programming labeling efforts? If so, what?
Will Kreth: The biggest difference is in the ID, and who
maintains the registry of data, but the process is the same. While EIDR is specific to content assets,
such as films, television shows, shorts and online video content, Ad-ID is used
to track video advertising assets. Utilizing both Ad-ID and EIDR IDs, enables near
real-time reporting for ad verification and audience measurement allowing
marketers to better optimize live and on-demand advertising similar to how
digital advertising is today.
Charlene Weisler:
Where do you see this effort three years from today?
Will Kreth: From an automation perspective, by the year
2020, we expect to see several of the world’s top media companies requiring
EIDR ID’s from all their business partners. The universal implementation of
open standards within the industry will not only unleash innovation but
according to a study by Ernst & Young in 2013, it will save the media and
entertainment industry millions of dollars annually, and provide new
opportunities for revenue generation.
Charlene Weisler: Any
advice for programmers, advertisers and marketers on this issue?
Will Kreth: The internet is built on open standards and
universally accepted, and we’re still seeing the resilient power of incremental
value creation that has across the world. Looking forward, the Internet of
Things wouldn’t be possible without open standards. Like a domain name URL, or
an IP address, or even a telephone number — EIDR exists to bring an open and
unique ID to all commercially-available audio/visual content. The sooner full
adoption arrives, the better it will be for thousands of companies and the
amazing work they bring to our screens, homes and theaters daily.
This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com
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