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M&E Journal: Identify and Automate: How the Entertainment Industry Can Monetize EIDR Universal Content Identifiers

Will Kreth, Executive Director, Entertainment ID Registry

“If you can’t identify it, you can’t operationalize or measure it. If you can’t measure it, you can’t monetize it.” These words by Clyde Smith, SVP of advanced technology at Fox Network Engineering and Operations, acknowledge the profound impact uniquely identifying content could have.

But how does one track content and its performance when it’s difficult to even keep up with the volume being produced and distributed every day? The outdated systems of manual workflows, title matching, reconciliation and attribution of viewership/usage are unsustainable.

By uniquely labeling — or “registering” as it’s more widely known — each piece of content in a machine-readable format, the M&E industry can optimize content and take advantage of supply chain automation to monetize their efforts.

That’s why this year, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) announced they were rolling out a pair of standards for the binding of unique content and advertising identifiers for video content, utilizing both the EIDR ID for content and Ad-ID for advertising.

Known as TAXI Complete, these standards deploy two audio watermarks from Kantar Media: one for ad and content identification — through embedded Ad-ID and Entertainment ID Registry (EIDR) codes — and another for identifying the media distribution outlet on which the ad or content appeared, which includes a time stamp.

An industry in transition

The broadcast, media and entertainment industries face ever-increasing demands on the variety of content, delivery methods and business models they must support. This, while needing to adjust to fragmented audiences who are divided-up between the different combinations of content, the ways that content is delivered, and the business models that support it.

Imagine culling through dozens of spreadsheets and a large swath of sources to find similarities in title and identifying characteristics. Then, imagine converting all that information into a single view, so you are able to derive an understanding of how your advertising is performing or which distribution channels are most effective. For several content producers, specifically those without large studio support, that’s a reality.

But it cannot remain that way. Relying on simple identifiers, such as the content title or synopsis, will not suffice any longer. These identifiers don’t work across language barriers, technical variations (e.g., SD vs. UHD), delivery methods, multi-party exchanges, and the ever-expanding worldwide content catalog.

Broadcast organizations that do not convert to unique IDs to remain competitive are at risk of being overtaken by newer, more agile alternatives. To remain competitive, broadcasters must constantly increase workflow velocity, accuracy and flexibility. These goals cannot be reached without reducing time to market, manual touch-points, and associated labor costs.

A path forward

To combat these challenges, a greater level of automation is required—automation that services markets in a practical, economical way.

Founded as a not-for-profit industry association in 2010 with a board of directors comprised of industry leaders from Sony Pictures Entertainment, Comcast, Google, TiVo, Walt Disney, Warner Bros., Creative Artists Agency and Movie Labs, EIDR offers a compelling solution to meet the needs across the entertainment supply chain for universal identifiers for a broad array of content.

EIDR IDs are globally unique identifiers for unambiguous identification of abstract works, edits or encodings. The accompanying metadata includes title, credits, edit details and technical details. Third-party and alternate identifiers can also be included to connect disparate data sources and maintain existing regional, national and international service providers’ identifiers.

For years, industry leaders have been trying to bridge the gaps in tracking content and advertising; however, year after year, new opportunities such as dynamic ad insertion, cross-screen interactivity and automated buying of cross-platform ad inventory continue to emerge. Through the use of Kantar Media’s dynamic audio watermark, both content (EIDR) and advertising (Ad-ID) identifiers can be easily embedded to facilitate cross-platform measurement, second screen deployment, and to provide additional opportunities for monetization.

The financial benefit of unique identifiers

EIDR IDs have already made their presence known. With nearly 2-million registered EIDR IDs in the global database, the unique identifiers currently live across a wide variety of content, including film, television (series and episodes), SVOD and OTT, as well as digital content. In fact, the majority of major content producers are already members.

Film companies and TV networks already receive, create, process/match and distribute audiovisual content, metadata and program guides originating from a large number of sources. These technical challenges, combined with the complex commercial landscape mentioned above, would not translate into viable business workflow optimization without innovative processes aimed at automating existing manual ones.

One of the reasons the previously mentioned organizations place stock in EIDR IDs is because they can live forever. So future behavior can always be tied back to a single content ID. With the challenge of tracking and monetizing content across platforms growing, EIDR is playing a central role in providing the mechanisms for accurate monitoring.

A case study

Google has thrived creatively, and its innovation throughout has improved existing business processes in multiple industries, including video retailing. Recently, the tech giant adopted the Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA) avails, which is a standardized transfer of information regarding content data for online VOD. It initiated this with EIDR IDs for content acquisition across its entire Google Play store. This pursuit came with a lot of consideration and vetting of EIDR’s potential.

The result? What originally took 50 hours to bring on a new title (in elapsed time) transformed to a simple, 12-minute onboarding process. This success led to EIDR IDs being included throughout the entire supply chain, enabling identification for “the full roundtrip”— from creation to distribution, measurement to reporting.

The road ahead

A large part of the industry has already coalesced around the open standard of EIDR. And while it has taken a few years, the historical success with similar precedents to drive supply chain automation — like packaged goods (UPC/EAN codes) and books (ISBN numbers) — is incontrovertible.

This automation will only continue. According to a 2013 Ernst & Young Study it is expected that several of the world’s top media companies will require EIDR IDs for all business purposes by 2020. In that time EIDR has helped propel the industry forward, and this new commitment to open standards will unleash innovation and save millions of dollars a year.

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