Optimizing Content Discovery on OTT Platforms through AI

Audiences can waste up to an average of 10 and a half minutes trying to search for something to watch across the different platforms. With a flurry of services available at viewers’ fingertips with vast libraries, it is not surprising that this is becoming more of a challenge. This is where personalization and AI come into play, offering a powerful solution to optimize content discovery on OTT platforms to fit each viewer’s needs. By leveraging AI technologies, platform providers can enhance user experiences, make them more enjoyable, increase engagement, and drive business growth.

There is an obvious need to help users find the content they want more easily, for example:

1. Growing Content Libraries

• As of October 2022, Netflix had at least 17,300 titles across its international catalogs.
• A platform can offer exclusive content to its subscribers based on both its own content and external content.
• Viewers are overwhelmed with choice, they don’t want to waste time searching for content, they want to be able to discover new content that they will love easily. To build trust with services, content discovery and personalization should be accurate to improve viewership and engagement. Over 70% of viewers say they would watch more content if it was personalized to their interests.

2. Increasingly Crowded Market

• 82% of US consumers have a video streaming subscription, with 4 subscriptions being the average.
• Not only is there a ton of content for viewers to choose from, but there is also an abundant choice of platforms. There are the big brands, niche brands, regional brands and more, in a market with so many options, platforms need to prioritize user experience to be able to stand out from the crowd especially when it comes to content discovery.

3. User Attention Span

• In today’s fast-paced world, users have limited attention spans. It is estimated that an average viewer spends only 20-30 seconds searching for content before abandoning a platform.
• An optimized content discovery system can address this challenge by quickly delivering relevant recommendations and making the discovery journey fun and enjoyable for the user.

Key Benefits of AI for Content Discovery

1. Personalized Recommendations

• AI algorithms analyze user preferences, viewing habits, and other criteria to provide tailored content recommendations. Using personalization to build unique UIs made up of rows specifically including content that each and every viewer will appreciate.
• Reducing the friction between users discovering the content they want to watch, helps increase user engagement and helps build a loyal subscriber base – for example, 60% of U.S. viewers will favor platforms with better content discovery.
• We automatically create captivating titles and organize rows of content for each of your users. Creating a unique, dynamic experience for all viewers filled with all of their personalized recommendations.

2. Content Categorization and Tagging

• AI can automatically analyze and categorize content based on genre, theme, cast, and other parameters.
• By enhancing metadata, AI can match more content to users that will resonate with it most.
• This enables users to explore content through specific categories or search filters, enhancing the overall content discovery experience.

3. Contextual Metadata

• Personalization solutions can extract metadata with AI from video content, including scene detection and descriptions, object recognition, and speech-to-text transcriptions.
• This rich metadata improves the accuracy of search results and enables better content matching, helping users find exactly what they are looking for.
• Our solution can utilize any form of metadata, we can enhance metadata to drive the most accurate personalization or work with your metadata partners and third-party apps

4. Behavioral Analysis

• AI algorithms can analyze user behavior patterns, such as watching history, content ratings, and interactions, to generate deeper insights. This information allows platforms to understand user preferences, optimize content libraries, and deliver relevant recommendations, ultimately increasing user satisfaction.
• XroadMedia can offer personalized recommendations based on different scenarios such as time of day, device or day of the week. For example, if a user always watches something in the evening for half an hour, our solution will recommend only content that is suitable for them at that time and for the desired length of content.

However, there are some considerations and challenges for platform providers, as AI algorithms become more sophisticated, transparency becomes even more essential. AI algorithms should be designed to avoid bias and promote diversity in content recommendations. Service providers must ensure fair representation of various perspectives, genres, languages, and cultures to offer an inclusive and balanced user experience. Additionally, any solution that utilizes data raises questions about privacy and how the data is used. 48% of consumers appreciate the convenience of personalization as long as their data isn’t compromised. With XroadMedia, all data used is anonymized, so there is no worry for GDPR and other privacy concerns.

By leveraging AI technologies to provide personalized recommendations, efficient categorization, contextual metadata extraction, and behavioral analysis, platform providers can develop positive user experiences and increase engagement to drive business growth. If you’re interested in understanding more about how XroadMedia is using AI in its solution for more than a decade now and can deliver results for your service, please get in touch today.