In the increasingly competitive landscape of our media and entertainment industry, the quest to monetize archive content stands as a pivotal strategy for content owners. Yet, the vastness and complexity of their content libraries pose challenges, with broadcasters often grappling with decades’ worth of content to sift through and categorize. Furthermore, the crucial step of digitization adds another layer of complexity, especially when a large volume of the archive exists in physical format such as tapes.
Enter metadata, a set of data that enhances content, providing useful descriptive information, such as the individuals featured, the location of filming, the narrative context, and more advanced information, including copyrights, expiration dates, and audio descriptions. Alongside this, it can also expedite the content-organizing process. In this way, with metadata indexed into the content, the expensive and lengthy exercise of organizing and digitizing archive content is made much more worthwhile. Overall, metadata may give media companies an edge in an increasingly competitive industry.
Key benefits of leveraging metadata include increased cost efficiency, data quality, and consistency. However, metadata must be utilized across the value chain to deliver all of these benefits, where different systems will have different metadata requirements at different points. For example, requirements differ for a Content Management System (CMS) and within a production environment via a Product Asset Management system (PAM) due to varied applications. Metadata management is a critical part of business strategy and one that can have a significant impact on revenue generation and overall business growth. As such, media companies that undervalue the importance of metadata from their business strategy will be cut off from valuable monetization opportunities and reduce their competitive advantage.
Metadata enhancement is an example of such an opportunity. This is when the existing metadata associated with the content is expanded and enriched, improving its discoverability. Importantly, this process can be automated with AI. To use an example, in sports content, tagging individual players, specific types of play, and real-time score updates would all be metadata enhancement, the upshot of which would be fast and efficient content searches after the fact. Metadata allows media companies to get a lot more use from their content and, therefore, can increase its monetization potential.
Metadata can greatly improve media companies’ competitiveness. However, the opportunity cost of choosing to add metadata to content and its ROI is important to consider. Business strategies in the media and entertainment industry increasingly include more diversified monetization plans, and archive content provides a perfect opportunity for that. Sports broadcasters are already realizing and implementing these valuable opportunities by using their archive content to reward dedicated fans with highlights from past matches to keep them engaged between seasons. Therefore, media companies that do not maximize the potential of their content with metadata will be losing out, while those who do can see a significant ROI. Having large volumes of adaptable and optimized content at your disposal propels you past the competition.
A content library that is metadata-rich is infinitely more accessible for production and distribution teams. This is a key competitive differentiator for media companies in the current media landscape. Metadata allows for content to be discovered and shared with both in-house and remote teams, creating maximum efficiency and more opportunities for creative collaboration. This is critical given that the speed and complexity of modern production and distribution models continue to increase, and metadata allows teams to retrieve incredibly specific files near-instantaneously. Metadata overcomes the problem of “needles” in the content library “haystack.”
It has never been more important for media companies to embrace metadata. It opens the door to significant monetization opportunities, meaning long-term ROI is ensured, and is also very adaptable, suiting the most specialized and individual content strategies. It is also a boon for production teams, empowering them to effectively navigate their content libraries with top-notch efficiency and ensuring they get the most out of their content. Overall, not implementing metadata will only cost you. With that said, the novelty of technology cannot be ignored, and there may be more about metadata that we have yet to discover. Nonetheless, with the support of a trusted tech provider that can simplify complexity and guide you through the journey, you can confidently harness its potential. A strategy that optimizes your content utilization and enhances monetization is undeniably a winning approach, firmly position your business ahead of the curve.