When people think metadata, they often think of cataloging. But according to Richard Kroon, technical director of the Entertainment ID Registry (EIDR), that doesn’t do metadata justice.
"Cataloging everyone experiences. That's the collection and curation of the metadata to describe the thing,” he said, speaking Aug. 5 during the OTT.X webinar "Winning the Content Supply Chain with Better Metadata.” “Librarians do this all the time. The problem with cataloging, as we've discussed, is it's different all over the place. Cataloging can't really help automation. It can't help supply chain efficiencies.”
That’s where common industry standards around IDs, like EIDR, come into play.
Kroon and others shared how modern workflows, interoperable metadata, and standardized identifiers all work together to help stakeholders improve content discoverability, support the growing demands of CTV, streaming, and live event distribution, and reduce operational friction.
“Metadata may not be the most exciting or sexiest of topics in our industry, but it is tremendously important across nearly every facet of the business it influences,” one speaker said. “It influences how content is organized, delivered, discovered, advertised, and monetized. And when something goes wrong, the impact can quickly be felt throughout the entire content supply chain.”
Or as Kirby Grimes, founder and CEO of 43Twenty, succinctly put it: “A video without metadata is stupid.”
“It's the connective tissue of the content supply chain,” Grimes said. “It tells every stream what the content is, how it relates to everything around it, and what the business is allowed to.”
A wide variety of channel operators are sourcing metadata from a wide variety of sources, panelists said, and reformatting of metadata for multiple platforms is a huge issue for them.
“That's really been the challenge that we've been working on over the past probably 18 months or two years is trying to understand season, series, episode data structures for TV, movies, and film, [and] how do you backdoor that into live events?” said Dustin Sullivan, CEO of SportsDataIO. “And then we've got this deeper understanding around traditional sports structures. And the reality is, is the there's no wrong answer when you say what's a competition, what's an event, what's a sport, because different answers can be surfaced depending on the audience and the use case. And so, how do you really build a bridge between that?” That's why SportsDataIO has been working on a new sports data exchange initiative and has been getting involved with other working groups across different verticals, mostly within media and entertainment.
With streaming continuously evolving and premium live events increasingly moving to digital platforms, a top competitive advantage goes to those who are efficient with their content operations, panelists agreed. And high-quality metadata is proving to be the foundation that connects every stage of the content supply chain, from onboarding and distribution to discovery, rights management, and monetization.
The optimal use of high-quality metadata begins with employing the right standards at the outset, Kroon said.
“I think it does all start with standards because you can't automate chaos,” he said. “If your house is not in order, you're not going to do anything well. But the standard does have to be fit for purpose.”