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How FlickShow Makes it Easier to Register Content on Universal AV Databases

EIDR universal IDs are becoming mandatory for some content buyers before they agree to purchase a movie or TV show, and they will often use the various universal audiovisual databases around the world to research content.

Registering content on all of these databases can be daunting for content owners but the new FlickShow service makes the process much easier, according to Tomas Gennari, CEO of BB-Media and CEO and founder of FlickShow, a self-described “one-stop registrar for universal content IDs.”

BB-Media analyzed the content available throughout the various database platforms worldwide, he said during the Discovery & Insights breakout session “Trends on Marketplaces & Universal Audiovisual Databases” that was part of the April 13 EIDR Annual Participant Meeting. BB has found about 5 million titles worldwide, he noted.

“Of course, when we look at Hulu in the U.S., it’s very easy to identify this content because they are… in English [and] are very famous” Hollywood titles,” he said. Most of those titles also already have a universal ID, either from IMDb, EIDR or another company, he noted.

But what happens when you look at content from an Asian country? “There is a lot of content on Asian streaming services that nobody knows about and there is no ID from EIDR or IMDb, Gennari said, noting: “They are nowhere to be found.”

And that is why “we started this new project called FlickShow that is part of BB,” which is one of the two global authorized EIDR ID retailers, he told viewers.

“Imagine you’re a content buyer for Netflix and along comes a distributor” that offers you two Argentinian titles that were successful in their home country,” he said. When you look the titles up on IMDb there is much more info provided about the first title than the second one, which just mentions the title. If you’re Netflix which one would you buy? The one with more info obviously, Gennari said.

“This is what we are finding when we look at a lot of Asian platforms…. There are a lot of titles that do not have an ID – and this is a huge problem for us because if we want to do market intelligence and we want to do market research we” can’t identify the content, he explained. “We want to know which genres they are,” along with other important details, he noted.

A few years ago, content acquisition involved the rights owner, the distributor and then festivals, industry events, virtual marketplaces, direct sales and inbound sales. Now you also have direct publishing. Then there’s the content buyer (linear TV, streaming services, etc.) and the audience, Gennari pointed out.

But that only happens for the top titles and is not how it works anymore for most platforms, he said.

There are now a whopping 4.9 million movies and TV series available across 1,618 streaming services globally, he said, noting: “There is no time to analyze 5 million titles all across the world.”

What is starting to happen with leading content buyers is that titles are “nowadays being offered in bulk” via distribution lists, application programming interfaces (APIs) and XMLs, behind-the-wall repositories and automated Excel files, he said.

Content buyers are increasingly figuring out what content they want to license based on automated title and content metadata analysis, he said, noting machine learning algorithms are being used. How much a title is being pirated is a great metric for a title’s success, he pointed out.

The main sources for all the information about the content are the universal audiovisual databases that include IMDb (which has 7.5 million titles in its database including movies, TV shows and a small number of video games, with 83 million registered users) and EIDR, he noted.

Lesser known to Americans is the Russian database Kinopoisk, which he said has 93 million registered users. He asked: Are your titles on that database?

Then there is the China database Douban that is even bigger than IMDb and Kinopoisk combined, with 200 million registered users, Gennari said, adding each of the databases has its own strengths.

If you are not on one of these databases, you won’t be able to sell your content, he warned, noting that just registering your content on IMDb is not enough.

“That is why we created” the audiovisual content “mega-registrar” FlickShow, he said, explaining it enables content owners to be present on the most well-known database platforms and marketplaces, with complete and truthful data.

It is an “automated and streamlined process” that is done “quite rapidly,” he said. So far, FlickShow has picked up two clients and “more are on the way,” he added.