This is the question that I ask myself and my colleagues at Simply.TV every day. Throughout 2020, Simply.TV has been helping many TV operators to maximize the value of all the content they get in from hundreds of TV channels and streaming services.

High-impact metadata for UI and UX experiences to match the Netflix's of the world

While the focus in 2019 was on building market-leading core technology to handle all general aspects of metadata and EPG management, the team at Simply has spent the first 9 months of 2020 on technology and content operations that will make a significant impact on any major TV operator's UI and UX:

Sports: We have built technology and created datasets enabling TV operators to design dedicated sports universes, similar to DAZN. Team vs. team images for almost all European markets and a normalized sports ID space allow sports fans to follow their teams and the images will not leave any doubt which match is coming up. This spans across more than 10 sports arts. In addition, we have direct API integrations into one of the leading sports data companies (ENET Pulse) if any customer would like to retrieve live sports data.

Kids and character universe: Our data enables universes similar to Disney+ or Netflix Kids corner – but across all schedule data and OTT data. The data contains character profiles with character logos from all big content studios and national broadcasters across Europe. The data is audience-tagged into age groups: 0-3, 3-6, 7-11+ for improved relevance.

Keywords and descriptors: Keywords describe the content more nuanced than genres and categories and will improve UIs and UXs in two ways:

1. Tailor recommendations to the single user, but more importantly;

2. Create meaningful carousels and navigation for content that share similarities

We have created comprehensive descriptors across movies, series, kids content, documentaries, and entertainment. So in our datasets, an animal documentary about wildlife in Africa can be distinguished from the documentaries about the rivers in the Amazons.

Live and top-content: X-Factor, Big Brother, Eurovision, national elections: Our customers send their weekly top-content analytics and we optimize our datasets to reflect user priorities; and we always have a strong focus on live content, as this remains a key driver for linear television. The partnership approach has proven to be valuable for both customers and us as metadata partners.

Scalability: It should be the standard, but it is the exception in the market for metadata. Launching brand-new markets with many new channels and several OTT services within weeks – we have done this several times to full satisfaction for our customers. In times of Covid-19 and rapid market changes, it is all about creating metadata that enables roadmap execution, so you can keep on developing your platform and maintain and expand your subscriber base.

In the next weeks, the team around Simply.TV will start to share many more insights into our products and technology that has found a strongly growing customer-base – and if you reach out, I promise you that you will be impressed by both technology and content.