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Metadata Madness Speakers: Data is Money

To put a point on the importance of metadata to your business, Cameron Davies, SVP of analytics for NBCUniversal, tends to look at it less like Field of Dreams (build it and the consumer will come), and more like Jerry Maguire (show me the money).

How placing an importance on metadata translates into revenue for media and entertainment companies needs to be a question everyone asks themselves, he and other panelists agreed at this month’s Metadata Madness event in New York.

In the final panel of the day, experts from both the content and technical side of metadata shared ideas on how content metadata is being used by analyst teams, turning the data associated with content into sources of revenue for their companies.

“One of the challenges … is being able to match relevant data for the same things from different sources,” said Brian Hughes, SVP of audience analysis for Magna Global. He sees different silos handling content in different ways, and only when metadata is attached to content, is the process made simpler, he said.

Fabio Luzzi, VP of advanced analytics and data science for Viacom, brought up a real-world example of how important metadata is today to content owners: voice search. Whenever a new platform emerges that utilizes voice search for content — even if the heaviest users of the devices are searching only 200 times a week — content owners and distributors need to be prepared, or risk being left behind.

“The more data we have the better. It’s important to have it, but also use it wisely,” Luzzi said. “I want people to view my content … but how do you search half a million VOD titles with voice commands? That’s solving a real problem. As a content provider, you want your stuff to come up. Nobody has to mandate that you do that. You just start losing if you don’t figure it out.”

The viewing habits of audiences have changed immensely, and continue to do so, said Priya Rajagopalan, VP of product management for Rovi, and metadata can help content owners discover what customers need. Something as simple as discovering what channel has what content, without any friction, can be immensely helpful for retaining customers, she said.

“It’s about the association of content,” she added. “The most relevant stuff needs to come up first.”

Matt Turner, CTO of media and publishing for MarkLogic, agreed, saying the new approach for handling metadata needs to be done in a non-abstract way, thinking about customers and how they’ll make use of it.

“There’s so much going on with metadata in the middle of the lifecycle,” he said. “And data helps bridge the gap for users. It’s about using and analyzing the data you have … and giving the user a refined answer.

“That kind of analysis can have a big impact. Because people don’t think about analytics while they’re doing a certain job.”