From Data to Delight: How XroadMedia and Simply.TV are Personalizing TV Experiences
You don’t need perfect metadata to deliver personalized experiences, but having high-quality, accurate metadata helps transform user experiences even further. In addition to utilizing AI and ML to enhance existing metadata, we also work with the leading metadata provider, Simply.TV to bring the best TV user experiences to our customers.
XroadMedia’s co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer, Tom Dvorak, sat down with Simply.TV’s Customer Success Manager, Isabel Rendón Guerrero, to discuss our partnership, IBC and all things metadata with personalization.
Catch the video below or read their conversation in this blog.
Transcript:
Tom Dvorak, XroadMedia: Welcome to our first Partner Spotlight with our partner Simply.TV. I would like to welcome Isabel Rendon Guerrero. Isabel, would you like to have a quick introduction about yourself, what you’re doing at Simply.TV and why you’re here today?
Isabel Rendón Guerrero, Simply.TV: Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure for me to be here. I am Isabel Rendon Guerrero and I am representing the leading metadata company, Simply.TV as Head of Customer Success and Customer Experience. I’ve been with Simply for almost two years now. I’ve been in the industry for a little longer, so I’m very excited to go more in-depth into our partnership.
TD: Can you elaborate a little bit more on what you do in your job? So, what does customer success management and experience mean to you?
IRG: We are all very enthusiastic about metadata. So, we also want to transfer all the knowledge that we get from our clients to our content teams so that we can translate that and build beautiful products for them. In my day-to-day, I take care of client requests, ensuring that everything is looking perfect in their platforms. Any request that comes from them is trickled down to every department in our organization so that we get the job done in a timely manner.
“We’re very enthusiastic about metadata”
TD: With IBC coming up, what are the three main things that Simply.TV will be showcasing there?
IRG: Yeah, so this year at IBC, the focus will be on super aggregation. Then, sports enhanced experiences, including live statistics and enhanced imagery. Also, of course, our recent acquisition of InFlow Media, but there’s also other exciting news that we will be revealing later on!
Metadata and Personalization are the perfect match
TD: How do Simply.TV and XroadMedia currently work together? What is our unique value proposition?
IRG: When launching new TV operators or developing an existing TV service, operators bring several technical vendors together. The more partners that can be involved in the conversation, the more complex it becomes. So, with XroadMedia, we have managed to create a seamless integration where our keyword-rich metadata is understood and is also part of the XroadMedia systems. The pre-integration ensures that there is a smooth process for our clients, where all of the metadata is working perfectly. And of course, that brings more value because there’s not a high timely commitment needed from clients where they don’t need to be as exposed in the integration project. And of course, faster time to market and the removal of implementation risks as well.
TD: We have some customers together already, some of which actually, we came in together and we knew the difference also between your data and other data. How do we solve problems for service providers together? What are the benefits?
IRG: The recommendations are extremely on vogue at the moment and very important in driving trust in the end users, ensuring that they find the content that they love. That is, of course, increasing satisfaction and ensuring that the users are coming back to the service because they love what they see. So, using all recommendations and personalization is extremely added value.
TD: I think also from our experience, we can say that, with the more structured response from your side and also the way you prepare the data, it’s easy also for our solution to take it in and ingest it and and make it work.
Together Simply.TV and XroadMedia increase satisfaction and drive return visits for Three (Drei) in Austria
● The rich keyword space makes sure that the similarity recommendations go further than referring to only genre and cast.
● Helping create more tailored rows as the characteristics, settings, periods, franchises and moods give extra information to make it more accurate.
● Improving content discovery with easy search using the rich metadata allows autocompletion.
● Better metadata is essential for matching good similarities and delivering the best search results.
TD: What are the main challenges you are finding your clients are struggling with when it comes to metadata?
IRG: Most of our customers come to us because they have challenges where they need super aggregation, something that is extremely important. At the same time, there is a challenge with the quality of the metadata. When talking about the quality, it’s in relation to the KPIs, so the coverage of imagery, as well as descriptions or other data points like keywords, is important. Which then links back to recommendations too. It’s not just the lack of coverage, but also there is still a very profound systematic issue in the industry where we are just sometimes still doing a lot of manual effort.
For example, in cases like sports overrunning, when we are not quick enough to make the updates, or also when there’s breaking news happening, it is sometimes extremely difficult, even nowadays, to ensure that all of the live data is accurate. So, there’s a big component of quality and accuracy that bakes in.
“.. still a very profound systematic issue in the industry where we are just sometimes still doing a lot of manual effort.”
TD: I think you have quite a focus on these kinds of areas as far as we’re concerned, as far as we’ve experienced those in our partnership. But why us? Why do you like working with XroadMedia?
IRG: I guess that’s an easy question! We have similar mindsets and have the same approach to customers and to products. We love our metadata and you love the recommendations and personalization technology. For us, we always felt that we shared the same sentiment, which is very important for our customers. Also, something we value extremely is products over commercials, which you value too.
“we value extremely is products over commercials, which you value too”
TD: One of the strengths, from my point of view, of this partnership is the agility, as we’re both still very much kind of startup-run companies. So, the communication is very quick and I think this is also, at least what we see, very much appreciated by our customers as well.
IRG: Definitely. The agility, flexibility, and quick turnaround are things that clients value extremely. Traditionally, this might not have been the case in the industry. As I said before, there is still huge manual intervention when dealing with metadata, so clients appreciate when working with partners like, XroadMedia and Simply.TV to get timely responses.
What trends should service providers be looking out for?
TD: Are there any trends you think they should focus on going forward or particularly for the next 12 months?
IG: Based on current observations in the industry, it is definitely super aggregation. So, having the ability to find the content across any linear channel and any streaming service. Artificial intelligence, as well, ensures that we are doing things smarter. As I said before, like there’s still a lot of manual intervention.
Then definitely the fast channels. We’ve observed that that has been a huge trend in the US and here in Europe, we are ready for it whenever operators are ready for it too!
Last but not least, there are sports, sports, and sports.
TD: I agree, I think there is more to come around some of those topics for both our companies at IBC! What are the next steps in our partnership?
IG: We look forward to launching several customer projects that are lined up for the coming months. And of course, at the end of the day, we want both to ensure that the end users find the content that they love in the quickest and most efficient way with the least time possible. We also look forward to taking XroadMedia to our more than 100 operator customers, to continue expanding our collaboration and solve their challenges around recommendation and personalization.
TD: Thank you for your time, it’s been a pleasure!
IG: See you there, looking forward to it!
IBC 2024 is the perfect opportunity to find out more about how XroadMedia and Simply.TV enable end users to find the content they enjoy most without spending too much time searching. Visit their stands: XroadMedia (5.B23) and Simply.TV (5.H73)
Book time with the XroadMedia, personalization experts here.
