Why is Content Labeling Taking So Long? EIDR’s Will Kreth Explains.

In my decade as a data consultant, I’ve become a bigproponent of content labeling to help facilitate the linking of content acrossplatforms and devices.  First spearheadedby Jane Clarke, CIMM’s CEO and Manager Director in 2009, the labelinginitiative for both ads and content promised to result in a type of universal,industry-standard UPC code. But it has taken much longer than I personally expectedfor the television marketplace. Not only are we are still not there, but itseems like there has been limited progress while the number and diversity ofplatforms and devices proliferate and the global footprint expands.

So I sat down with Will Kreth, Executive Director, EIDR, totry to understand just what the challenges and obstacles are that are keepingus from what seems to be a no-brainer – a universally accepted labelingprotocol so that every creator gets the full credit of all of the views fortheir content. I wanted to understand what’s going on and why it’s taking so damnlong.

To some in the industry, according to Kreth, contentlabeling can involve metadata or behavioral tagging. But for him, contentlabeling takes on a much broader definition.

Charlene Weisler:What is your definition of content labeling?

Will Kreth: We think of it as unique identification ofcontent to help the media and entertainment supply chain, to help workflows, andto help the life-cycle of a title. Content identification (through unique,machine-readable IDs) helps all of the different players / actors in theecosystem - in the existing value chain, and also in the aspirational, as yet to-be-realizedvalue chain.

Weisler: Who is doingit now and who is not doing it now?

Kreth: We have been strong in the film industry – with now95% to 100% coverage at first theatrical window for all movies from the top six (now five) Hollywood studios. However, televisionis a major gap for us – in that we have not cracked the code on the motivationsfor the networks to look at open standard, unique IDs as a way to improveaudience measurement, generate incremental revenue, and/or lower costssignificantly.  

Weisler: Why would TVnot see it while the film industry does see it?

Kreth: For years and years, television didn’t even operatewith external identifiers. Content was shared – the satellite and cableoperators and broadcast networks just used internal IDs – then publishedspreadsheets, Word documents or PDFs of program schedule information for printTV listings and Electronic Program Guides (EPGs). So, television in thetraditional world of the last 30 to 40+ years was very linear. Then, On Demand andDVRs came – and the VOD platforms developed by cable had an effort aroundcreating VOD metadata – because they realized that they would be the onessending the assets files out to the field to local cable head-ends. They had todescribe them well so they could be ingested into broadcast automation or play-outsystems.

Weisler: How is the televisionlandscape in content IDs structured?

Kreth: The incumbents were the duopoly between Rovi (now TiVo) and TMS (the former Tribune Media Services) which absorbed and then rebranded itself as Gracenote, and now Gracenote is part of Nielsen. The TMS ID has the lion’s share of usage in North American television broadcasting metadata. It’s the unique ID that is the incumbent. It took a lot of years to get there through competition to gain marketshare. Gracenote has become the dominant player in unique IDs in the United States, but not globally. So there is a vertically integrated play that the TMS ID is a part of that is now required by Nielsen. So you now have a unique ID for the majority of U.S. paid TV viewing tied to the ratings system for the majority of U.S. homes. Through hard work and market dominance, the TMS ID (which went from Tribune, then Gracenote and now Nielsen), has achieved somewhat of a winner-take-all-effect. (Notably, Rovi/TiVo is a founding member of EIDR, along with Movie Labs, Cable Labs and Comcast) 

But there are some hold-outs. Some use TiVo IDs, some don’tuse IDs because they have decided they are not at the end point of thedistribution chain,  and some use IDsfrom RedBee (formerly FYI Television) or others.  Meanwhile, some sources, like electronic programguides in all of the major set top box manufacturers, had to be standardized.That process took years to get to a certain level of quality and there arestill a lot of gaps and mismatched metadata and errors. Also, the digital videorecorder pushed a lot of folks towards standardization – because it insisted onthe notion that if you are going to record a program – you need to know exactlywhen it starts and stops and what the program is. From a consumer’s point ofview – it would be unacceptable if you got the wrong program at the wrong time.There was no room for guesswork. And that pushed folks towards the effort forstandardization around television metadata.

Weisler: What aboutEIDR today?

Kreth: It’s a different world than just 10, even 5 years ago. There’s greater complexity and new business models beyond just rated linear and on-demand television (or legacy DVRs).  The challenges of multi-platform distribution, streaming, and international OTT businesses are helping convince doubters that the world could  do very well by adopting  EIDR’s open standard to precisely identify the thing itself (content labeling)  no matter where it plays or what device it plays on. Data collection and analytics are no longer a “nice to have” – they are mission critical.   With EIDR’s open ID standard becoming ubiquitous in TV,  costs would go down, innovation would go up, competition would thrive in a world where title level ID metadata is shared as a global standard - and not held in any one company’s proprietary ecosystem.

Weisler: So why is ittaking so long?

Kreth: If you are a broadcaster, you would have been workingfor years and years to get these systems set up, to get the TMS IDs flowing,and to get them into broadcast automation systems. Switching to another title IDor even supporting, side by side, another title ID requires capital oroperating expenditures and that are not often in the budget of the majornetworks. Unlike film – which did not have an existing solution, they hadindependent data services and when they saw that there could be something like auniversal ISBN number for film and TV - they said, ‘sign us up’ and incubatedthe data model structure at Movie Labs (the research and development arm of theUS film industry). So, we have work to do in television. The good news is:  We’re making great inroads with TVbroadcasters in Sweden, the Nordics, the UK and EU.  Our motto has always been – “Lots of IDs, Low Cost”. We want to makeacquiring and tagging labeling TV (and all video) content with unique EIDR IDsas easy, painless and inexpensive as possible.

With television – we realized we were up against existingworkflows and lifecycles of how content was flowing and with all of thevendors, hardware manufacturers, suppliers and operations systems there was noone place to go. We’re starting to hear from vendors in the television industrythat they’re ready to support EIDR in their software and toolsets. The world wouldchange in an instant if one of the large US MVPDs said ‘we require EIDR IDs.’  And we see signs that may be happening with atleast one of the major US MVPD’s, especially due to the demonstrable need forunique IDs in measuring a multitude of data points and KPIs, on multipleplatforms, with a myriad of program titles.

Weisler: Will, knowingwhat you know, what do you think the timeline is to get more than critical massfor television?

Kreth: There is a project we call EIDR 2020, where we’repushing to start to see the major US TV distributors and vendors support EIDRalongside their existing workflows or with their existing IDs. With a sunrise periodfor EIDR IDs ubiquity in 2020 – it starts to create that catalyst, the criticalmass to move people off of stasis and inertia and toward embracing andextending their platforms and their toolsets to support EIDR. Next year will beour tenth year - so there will be nothing greater than to see an industry-wideEIDR 2020 sunrise begin in television.