Internet video is all the rage among consumers, and publishers, broadcasters and advertisers are all eager to catch this wave. Internet video is projected to be the majority of consumer Internet traffic in the coming years, and the Internet a significant distribution medium for video. Paradoxically, publishers are facing challenges in monetizing Internet video despite consumer demand.
The Internet differs from traditional means of distribution. Much of the value propositions of the Internet as a distribution medium have not been recognized and used toward the strategic goals of video publishers.
Metadata is the linchpin to unlocking this value. With high-quality metadata, content publishers can create video experiences integral to Internet audiences and new monetization schemes around these experiences, including advertising. Metadata enables the following and more:
- search, both at a file and scene level;
- multiple navigation paths within or across different videos in a manner that users are accustomed to in Internet navigation;
- clip and playlist creation for exploiting viral sharing and social networking trends;
- dynamic and targeted programming to create higher user engagement;
- precise targeted advertising tailored to user behavior; and
- accurate reporting and analytics critical to advertising and monetization. (See Figure 1 on the bottom of page 2.)
Metadata is the third key element of video production, after video and audio. While metadata is critical to the success of Internet video strategies, costs associated with authoring metadata are insignificant to the overall costs of video production.
Metadata quality must be assured to deploy successful Internet video strategies. High-quality metadata is written by humans as opposed to automated. While automated schemes are neither sufficiently accurate nor reliable, they also do not allow the programming choices possible with human authored metadata. At the same time, such metadata can be added to video even after video has been published, creating new use cases and programming options.
Such high-quality metadata cannot be an afterthought or, worse, overlooked. Successful Internet video strategies may well rest on suitably authored metadata and metadata management systems.
Metadata applications
It is also important to understand that metadata is not a single attribute of video, but rather serves multiple purposes. Among these, it creates new avenues for creative expression by video publishers and new models of advertising. It also allows for increased advertising and programming options, as well as increased new consumer video experiences.
Let us consider a few examples of video programming that have been tailored for Internet audiences using metadata:
- Dynamic ad insertion and flexible ad logic Implementations of metadata for dynamic advertising and flexible advertising logic enable broadband video publishers to enhance how they monetize their video libraries by creating structured metadata that describes each meaningful scene within the original source videos. This metadata defines the optimal in-stream video ad insertion points, allowing publishers greater control and flexibility with their advertising strategies. In addition, the ads served in the precise insertion points can be targeted by third-party ad providers based on the scene metadata, such as character name, player name, topic and keyword. Banner or overlay ads can also be targeted based on the rich metadata. As a result of this greater ad logic flexibility, rather than just pre- and post-rolls for each asset, publishers can set their ad logic to use the midroll insertion points. The publisher sets the ad timer, and the ad plays at the next available insertion point, no matter what asset or scene is being viewed, after the timer has expired. The result is that the viewer has the freedom to sample more assets and navigate directly to the most interesting scenes, while the publisher can monetize that experience in the most effective way possible.
- Search, clips and playlists Extreme Outdoor Network (www.xontv.tv), which specializes in outdoor video such as hunting and fishing, realized that having rich metadata for each scene within its 60min videos would allow the viewer to search or jump right to their favorite segment by species, weapon, location and so on.
- Chapterization, skip and search When Fox Reality decided to broadcast its Fox Reality Really Awards show on the Web, it indexed the entire awards show in segments so that users could watch sections that were of interest to them. Through metadata, users can skip to sections based by award, show, presenter, musician and so on, as well as create playlists and watch them in linear fashion.
- Dynamic programming and multiple navigational paths Sports Illustrated uses metadata to create dynamic programming for sports fans through its FilmRooms video portals. Users can navigate through multiple paths to view highlights, which are updated as the games progress and rankings change. Users can search by team, player, position and more to create their own highlight clips that can be shared with others and posted on user Web sites and blogs.
- Mashups, personalization and sharing Lifetime uses metadata to allow users to define their own virtual scenes within a video program. These scenes can be shared with others and concatenated to create user-defined playlists (mashups).
- Reorganize and collaboration Carleton University uses video on demand to create lectures that students can tailor to their needs through indexing parts of video lectures and reorganizing them to their individual requirements. At the same time, student notes and annotations make the videos searchable by other students.
Low production costs
One of the underlying questions is the cost of authoring metadata and whether one approach is more cost-effective than another. (See Figure 2.) This boils down to the question of quality versus quantity. If accuracy and premium end-user experience is secondary to processing large volumes of video for a basic search index, then automation is likely to help solve the problem better than a human. Automation, such as scene change and speech to text, serves well in the production stage of video because there is a lot of raw footage, and the people handling the video are professionals. Their task is to manage the video production, not to consume or monetize the video.
The cost of human-authored metadata is not only less than automated metadata, but it is also insignificant relative to the overall video production costs. Human metadata authoring can typically be accomplished in much less time than the duration of the video. People don't have to be trained to recognize speech or images like machines do, reducing upfront investment of time and resources. Lastly, human authored metadata allows for further human creativity and reasoning to be applied to video programming, bringing new elements of creativity to an already creative process with negligible incremental costs.
Conclusions
Metadata is a critical element to the success of video on the Internet. Publishers need to address metadata creation as an essential part of the video production workflow.
Publishers need to incorporate systems that author and manage metadata toward these objectives as they look to build audiences and advertising with their Internet video strategies.
Sam Vasisht is founder of 2/1 TechMedia and Patrick Donovan is vice president and general manager at Gotuit.
Metadata-enabled features Video search (asset level) Video search (scene level) Seek and skip functions Video packaging and presentation Playlisting Dynamic program updates Multiple navigation paths within or across videos Mashups/remixes Advertising (in-stream, overlay, banner) Personalization and targeting Sharing and social networking Reporting and analytics Recommendations
Figure 1. Metadata-based applications allow the inherent value of video to be unlocked and monetized on the Internet.
