Editorial
PUBLISHER AND EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Nick Snow nick. snow @ advanced-television. com
Inside information
Editorial
MANAGING EDITOR
Colin Mann colin. mann @ advanced-television. com
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
Chris Forrester
chris @ forrester-solutions. com
PUBLISHING ASSISTANT
Nik Roseveare
nik @ advanced-television. com
ART EDITOR
Steve Overbury steveoverbury @ yahoo. co. uk
CONTRIBUTORS
David del Valle- Madrid Pascale Paoli-Lebailly- Paris Branislav Pekic- Rome
INSIGHT ASSOCIATES
3Vision ABI Research Ampere Analysis Caretta Research Decipher Media Consultants Futuresource Consulting MIDiA Research Omdia Parks Associates PP Foresight
SNL Kagan
SALES DIRECTOR
Sanjeev Bhavnani
sanjeev @ advanced-television. com
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ISSN 1477-8092
In this issue, we study the use of AI in content discovery and recommendation. Surprise, surprise, AI has come to feature prominently in the conversation. Who’ d have thought?
We all know choice is a problem( even though we have been sold it as a massive benefit for years), and decision paralysis is real, and a real turn off for subscribers. One report says users spend over twentyeight hours a year scrolling for something to watch – and often give up before they find it.
Surely, AI is the answer. Rather than an MLT rack built from profile history, surely something that can respond to intuited use prompts, or actual cues expressed in the semantics of‘ mood’ would be ideal?
EETV is super happy with its cross-platform guide boosted by AI. But the most impressive thing about it is that it is cross-platform, that’ s the main bit everyone should copy. You don’ t need the expense of AI to read basic metadata about what is on where.
If you do use AI to surf the content universe and dig out an oh, you know, noiry detective thing, in English but like that one from Sweden, with a tunnel?.... and that actor, good looking, drove a car …. It will be expensive. And, sure, it will find something, but will you will be able to see it?
As one contributor points out, platforms are great at marking up when new stuff arrives, not so much when it leaves. Also, while it’ s sort of true that you can get Noir Car Man on Prime- as AI picks up – actually, it’ s via Prime and you need a subscription to Starzwedish Detectives to access it. This is the kind of annoyance you can create without AI.
As others point out, there’ s a lot that can be fixed to help cut choice churn before you throw expensive AI tokens at it. Research shows close to half of respondents wanted two things more than anything else: make my‘ continue watching’ near the surface and easy to find and ditto‘ my watch list’ – i. e. the stuff I already did some HUMINT on! Who’ d have thought it? Apart from anyone who has ever used a streaming platform UI.
Inside
The Wrap 4-8 Cover Story 9-11 Company contribution 12-13 Company contribution 14-15 Company contribution 16-17 Research 18
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