TiVo launches new metadata packages to help make TV content more searchable

While TiVo still has a thriving consumer business (about eight million users) the DVR company has now transformed into a b2b data powerhouse. One of their focuses is now on metadata and how they can provide broadcasters and content owners with better information so people can find what they’re looking for.

At NAB this week the company launched the following offerings.

• Knowledge Graph Engine: TiVo is the only metadata provider that can generate dynamic, regionalized metadata using TiVo’s Knowledge Graph Engine. It provides discovery systems with a deeper understanding of entertainment content, how it relates to each other and most importantly, the strength of those connections. It enables more contextually-relevant discovery experiences by assessing what is happening in a specific part of the world at any moment and relating that to entertainment content to anticipate what viewers will want next.
• Enhanced Connections: TiVo’s unique machine learning technology also identifies relevant connections between content along with the strength of the relationship, enabling search and recommendation systems to present related content when appropriate. For example, articles on a content producer’s web properties can now be mapped to informative profile pages, creating more opportunities to consume media.
• Trending Content: TiVo continuously assesses the popularity and relevance of content, enabling discovery systems to anticipate consumers’ interests and more effectively merchandise catalogs by prioritizing and promoting popular content. For example, recommendations need to be aware of popularity in order to find the right balance between giving a certain amount of familiar recommendations to gain trust, while also giving a certain number of novel recommendations that enable discovery. Popularity can also be used to prioritize predictive search results, connecting users with the content they’re looking for as quickly as possible.
• Keyword Relevancy: An expanded set of descriptive metadata creates new ways to discover content, increasing the visibility of a content producer’s catalogs. For example, keywords that provide a deeper understanding of content enable more relevant recommendations and make content more searchable.

These sophisticated search tools are helping bring TV away from the days of ignorant set top boxes and non-functional search options.