Tracking Content. The State of Content Labeling. An Interview with EIDR’s Will Kreth

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  As the volume of content in distribution continues to increase around the world, the outdated systems of manual workflows, title matching, reconciliation and attribution of viewership / usage are unsustainable.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

Less Secret Every Day: ACR and Logistics at the Secret Society Meeting

The Secret Society, established in 2015 by Mitch Oscar, an advanced television strategist with USIM, was created to inform industry leaders about the advanced TV landscape, addressability, and data-driven advertising. 

Each annual meeting is designed to bring forward pertinent issues within the industry, such as attribution, targeting with data, and other trends and initiatives. Here we dive into two focal trends: automatic content recognition (ACR) and logistics.

What Is Automatic Content Recognition?
ACR is a content labeling protocol that enables the tracking of a piece of content across all platforms. Alan Wolk, co-founder, editor, and lead analyst at TV[R]EV, stated that while automatic content recognition “functions off smart TVs,” it’s also present in smartphones and other mobile devices.
There are two types of automatic content recognition: video and audio. Video captures pixels from a screen and then matches those pixels to others off-screen or on other content platforms. Audio runs off apps, listening to what’s on the TV and then performing the same comparison across other platforms.

Read the full article on the Videa blog.

Open-Standard Content Recognition for a More Organized Industry

Let’s talk about silos. In addition to data silos impeding accurate cross-platform measurement, there are also content recognition coding silos. Companies like Nielsen, comScore, and Google all have their own content ID protocols—or “walled gardens” of proprietary coding—and none of those protocols are compatible with the others.

This makes it almost impossible to effectively and accurately track a piece of content through its various platform exposures. So advertisers may know where their ads are running, but they still need to manually stitch together all the sources.

Why Do We Need Them?
Open standards—whether for data, content IDs, and even fee structures—”establish rules of engagement between marketplaces so demand and inventory are represented fairly,” notes Brad Smith, senior vice president of revenue and operations at Videa, in a piece for AdExchanger.

Read the full article on the Videa blog.

Panel Based Cross Platform Measurement. Interview with Dr. Hannu Verkasalo of Verto Analytics

Dr. Hannu Verkasalo, CEO of Verto Analytics, started out as an entrepreneur straight out of school. “I built a few consulting companies using my skills in data analytics, and helped big telcos in Europe to better measure and understand their consumers,” he explained, before moving into building technology products. He added, “Throughout my career, I’ve always focused on constant learning, and I’ve had the pleasure of working with top talent and forward-looking customers.”

Charlene Weisler: Tell me about your company.

Hannu Verkasalo: Verto Analytics is the world's first consumer-centric media measurement company. We independently collect data in the market, using a unique panel-based single-source audience measurement approach. We track consumer media behavior across all platforms and channels, 24/7. Based on our methodology, we’ve built a set of media measurement products and services. Using an information-as-a-service model, we help big brands and technology companies understand their competitive landscape, monetize their audience, and better target advertising dollars in a cross-platform omni-channel world. We are based in Helsinki, Finland, with offices in New York City, San Francisco and London and are venture-capital backed.

Charlene Weisler: What are the viewing behaviors of the cross-device consumer?

Hannu Verkasalo: The cross-device consumer is becoming the norm. Close to 75% of American adults use at least two devices per month and almost 40% use at least three. Smartphones are used throughout the day, PC use peaks in the daytime, and tablets have gained market share during prime time versus TV use. The next generation of consumers is going to be even more mobile-centric versus being tethered to a PC or a TV.

Charlene Weisler: What is the most important cross-device metric for advertisers?

Hannu Verkasalo: Net reach, which is defined as the total number of unique, unduplicated viewers of an ad or unique count of consumers for specific content. It’s critical for advertisers to gauge the net audience that a given campaign or selected properties can potentially reach - regardless of the channel or device.

Charlene Weisler: How can you measure attention and engagement?

Hannu Verkasalo: Attention by tracking what people see on the foreground of their devices and whether people take actions based on the content they see. Do they make a purchase or leave the app only to return five minutes later? We measure every user interaction with the device second-by-second. One of the most popular metrics to measure attention is the cross-device clickstreams people go through based on a trigger, like search, advertising or social. We have built some metrics to quantify this.

Engagement by counting the seconds people use a specific service, app, or site, on the screen. We track this second-by-second, validating exactly what people do and for how long. One of the popular new metrics for engagement we have invented is stickiness: Services that have a high stickiness rating also have high loyalty and attention among users.

Charlene Weisler: Is the lack of an industry standard content ID protocol a challenge in measuring cross device comparably across advertisers? Media companies? Marketers?

Hannu Verkasalo: Visibility into what consumers are doing cross-platform is an enormous challenge for the industry. You hear that from media companies, marketers and advertisers. We address this challenge with our single-source passive measurement panel. Rather than measuring device use by tying together data from a mobile panel or PC panel, we measure engagement of a single consumer across all devices and content. We connect all that cross-device activity back to that unique consumer.

Charlene Weisler: If so, how can we get to an industry standard?

Hannu Verkasalo: Consumer behavior has changed more in the last five years than the past 50. Consumers switch between multiple devices and services throughout the day, but many companies still struggle with measuring this behavior due to lack of visibility and measurement methods that don’t do a good job of quantifying consumer behavior. The industry needs a modern measurement standard to meet the demands of brands, advertisers and publishers. Media companies, like Turner, Viacom and many others are stepping up to the plate to lead that charge.

Charlene Weisler: What makes your company different from others in the space?

Hannu Verkasalo: We are the only audience measurement company that measures all media usage, 24/7, across all platforms and devices. We work with leading brands to assess and define modern use cases for this type of media measurement data from product development and road mapping to media planning and consumer insights.

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com

Challenges to Linear TV. Interview with IRIS.TV’s Field Garthwaite

There are many ways to discover new content through curation and the need is greater as both the content choices and delivery options continue to increase. IRIS.TV boasts that they use, “artificial intelligence and adaptive machine learning to surface the most relevant video for each individual site visitor on desktop, tablet, mobile phone, even if the video is delivered OTT,” according to Field Garthwaite, Co-Founder and CEO of the company.  

Garthwaite has an eclectic background from data-oriented companies such as Rubicon Project to content creation as the Assistant Editor for the Emmy award winning PBS documentary "Girls on the Wall" to research as a Research Assistant at Universal Pictures. His current company IRIS.TV, just came off a strong 2016 by expanding into eleven countries across 5 continents including Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, India, Qatar, Panama and Chile.

Charlene Weisler: What do you see as the biggest challenges to linear TV today?

Field Garthwaite: Consumers receive hundreds of channels from their cable providers and the latest research shows that they watch less than ten percent of the channels. But even then discoverability is a problem for networks and other video providers. Meanwhile consumer viewing habits are trending toward On Demand and TV-centric services like Netflix, HBO Go, Amazon and Hulu. So now, linear TV programmers are competing with websites, apps and social media platforms that utilize interactive recommendation engines like IRIS.TV. It is a big leap from traditional TV to personalized viewing experiences with business rules to guide the video viewing experiences. Traditional TV will not go away, but it will merge and become more interactive as consumption continues to move to digital platforms.

Charlene Weisler: How does the IRIS.TV content curation work?

Field Garthwaite: Let's say the most compelling next video for a particular individual is sitting in the publisher's vault, untouched for months. Because it knows that video will be of genuine interest, IRIS.TV’s personalization engine, Adaptive Stream™ goes and finds it and "programs" it into a continuous stream (teasing it in a preview screen in the corner of the current video.) Suddenly, a video that the publisher hasn't monetized in a long while generates revenue. IRIS.TV can also provide “Netflix style” content recommendations to support user content discovery.

Charlene Weisler: How do you use data?

Field Garthwaite: To optimize video assets' discoverability, we optimize data structure and taxonomy by ingesting asset metadata. We also track viewer behavior and each video's performance so that publishers know what content works across a variety of parameters such as category, device, time of day, and in-stream (knowing what assets generate greater follow-on viewing). All of this happens in the background, automatically.

We also utilize data tools to help customers learn from their audience engagement and consumption patterns. When the Cubs won the World Series, every sports customer of ours had a dozen or more videos. But the reality is that one of those videos outperforms all the rest, and by helping our customers be more data driven, we enabled them to put the best performing video on their home page or on the trending article on the Cubs win. 

Charlene Weisler: How does your company measure TV?

Field Garthwaite: We look at viewer behaviors such as the device the user is using, what time they are engaging, how long they’re engaged, bounce rate, geolocation, demographics, as well as market data including advertising spend and revenue.

Charlene Weisler: How will viewing and measuring TV change with connected TVs?

Field Garthwaite: TV sets remain the number one source for streaming TV and video content in America. If publishers invest in innovative video platforms for their channels and apps, connected TVs will enable media companies to personalize video programming using machine learning and give viewers the “sit back and watch” experience that they love. Connected TVs would make it possible to use data sets to structure and organize TV programming categories such as news, sports, reality TV, documentaries, and to pull content from top sources based on the individual consumer’s preferences. This will also clearly have a positive impact on their ability to get the right commercials to the right viewer.  AI-based personalization essentially lowers costs of presenting customized video programming and increases advertiser revenue, a win-win for video publishers.

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com
 

Cross Platform Measurement with Help From CIMM

One of the most frenetic areas of measurement development today is in cross platform. Creative and scalable solutions are being crafted that enable programmers and advertisers to gain a more complete picture of how the usage of various media platforms compare to and blend within each other.  There is no standard yet, but there are a myriad of possible semi-solutions that can link some, but not yet all, platforms under one metric. Progress is being made and it is only a matter of time (and data) before we get to a complete and scale-able measurement.

CIMM’s annual Summit this past week focused on cross platform measurement. True to its name and mission, the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement seeks to transform the way audiences are measured. Managing Director Jane Clarke has a clear vision of CIMM’s mission in cross platform and has been a great advocate of advancements in measurement. She said, “This year’s Summit showcased that exciting new methodologies to better understand the complexities of cross-platform media measurement are being formed, and the industry as a whole is taking notice.”

The half day meeting included an update on CIMM’s TAXI (Trackable Asset Cross Platform Identifier) Initiative which CIMM launched two years ago and which CIMM continues to support in the form of project investment and analyses. TAXI’s importance is being recognized. Jane explained that “the widespread industry adoption of Ad-ID and EIDR coding for all advertising and video content assets, the goal of our TAXI initiative, received resounding support from Summit attendees.”

TAXI, with its advocacy of a UPC type standard for content (both programming and advertising) across all platforms, is one very important area of need in developing cogent measurement. And the need goes beyond measurement. Citing the four “R’s of asset identification, Research, Royalties, Rights and Residuals, it is clear that the importance of verifying asset exposure across platforms serves many purposes. While TAXI's first recommendation is to register assets using Ad-ID and EIDR, there is also an initiative to develop an open standard for binding the metadata to the asset, so it won't be lost through transcoding and compression. This may be with a watermark or fingerprint technology (ACR) or by using the closed captioning space in TV broadcasting. 

In a panel on the Roadmap for Cross-Platform “Exposure” Measurement, the value of asset identification was estimated to be $2.5 billion in recurring economic benefit to the industry. So this issue is no small stakes and the challenges to overcome are not difficult, costly or insurmountable. Janice Finkel-Greene of MAGNA Global gave one example. “Without a standard, it is hard to get show titles to match”. Titles are input by humans and even a simple miss-spelling can cause hours of extra clean-up work. Once a standard code is appended to all content, the match will be based on the code itself and not the capricious spelling of the content title. As Harold Geller of Ad-ID explained, “If you can’t identify it, you can’t operationalize it. If you can’t operationalize it you can’t measure it. And if you can’t measure it you can’t monetize it.” That in itself should be a compelling argument for the adoption of a standard coding system.

ESPN has embarked on an ambitious hybrid solution for cross platform measurement with Project Blueprint combining TV, Radio, PC and Mobile data via Arbitron and comScore. As ESPN’s Artie Bulgrin explains, “The knowledge gaps about how people consume media across multiple platforms are growing and so are the business implications. Our goal is not to create new currencies, but to provide an essential layer of research that begins to mitigate those gaps with a scalable, on-going measurement solution. What makes Project Blueprint so unique is that it combines the breadth of reporting from ‘big data’ measures (census analytics) with the depth of persons-level data from single-source panels.” 

 

All in all, the CIMM Summit proved to be an industry changing event, moving asset identification and cross platform measurement forward. “Our event was a success,” Jane Clarke said, “and CIMM will continue sparking discussions to help marketers make smarter ad buy decisions and receive better return on their ad dollar investments.” 

A solution to cross platform measurement appears closer than ever.