Yahoo News Gracenote Wants to Address Frustrations Among Viewers Unable to Find Streaming Content
Gracenote, owned by audience measurement giant Nielsen, has launched three services designed to help frustrated viewers in the streaming age find programming more easily and allow pay TV and streaming video aggregators to “put compelling content first and solve common ‘where, when and how to watch’ as well as ‘take me to watch’ use cases.”
Touting its “up-to-date and comprehensive datasets covering subscription video on-demand (SVOD) and linear (FAST) content availability,” Gracenote said the new offerings will help “address the fragmented viewing experience” by pairing TV, movie and sports programming availability data with program metadata to make the search for and discovery of content easier for consumers, while allowing “streaming aggregators, digital platforms and multichannel video programming distributors” to optimize their business.
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The company quoted Nielsen’s “State of Play” report, which found that 20 percent of consumers say they abandon a viewing session when they can’t find something compelling to watch. “With content frequently moving between providers, a blockbuster movie that is available on a VOD platform one day could be gone the next,” the company said. “Different streaming services may feature different seasons or individual episodes of a popular TV show hampering seamless viewing experiences. Accelerating fragmentation among live sports rights makes finding a single game difficult and following a team throughout a full season nearly impossible.”
No surprise then that the streaming age has not only brought new content to consumers but also “frustration among viewers unable to find what they’re looking for,” said Gracenote, whose program metadata, imagery and ID offerings have long been used in linear electronic program guides.
“As the entertainment ecosystem continues to evolve, a massive opportunity exists to drive the next iteration of streaming,” explained Trent Wheeler, chief product officer at Gracenote. “For it to reach its full potential as a channel, streaming needs to deliver better user experiences enabled by search and discovery of all content – TV, movies and live sports – wherever it’s available.”
The firm’s three new offerings to address these challenges in the streaming age are: Streaming Sports Catalogs for live sports events, “helping connected TV and digital customers point fans to games no matter what streaming service they’re on;” Streaming Video Catalogs, up-to-date TV program and movie availability data, helping connect viewers to the entertainment content they want across various services; and FAST/Streaming Channels, “metadata for nearly 2,000 linear channels worldwide helping digital platforms launch FAST offerings more quickly and easily than ever.”
Together, these services will “enable customers to address consumer pain points, deliver improved user experiences, and drive better monetization,” Gracenote said.
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