The vast quantity of content that today’s streaming services offer can be overwhelming to consumers who are just trying to find something to watch.
Viewers frequently find that the process of finding information takes far longer than they are ready to wait. By leveraging data to provide users with the material they want to watch and assist them in discovering new content based on their viewing preferences, FAST channels have the ability to completely rethink content discoverability. Only a small portion of the enormous amount of data that FAST systems have at their disposal is being fully utilized. By adding viewing data to the content discoverability process, advertisers may reach their target audiences more effectively, increase engagement with the content, and eliminate issues that have emerged in the new streaming environment.
Since both mobile and traditional TV screens will continue to play important roles in the future of content consumption, there has never been a more pressing demand for a seamless, high-quality watching experience across all devices.
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According to Chris Pfaff, CEO of Chris Pfaff Tech Media, “content discovery, curation, and what we do as both viewers and programmers are serious issues” in today’s CTV ecosystem. “And content discoverability is still a major problem.”
This article will examine how various tech, media, and content companies are tackling the difficulties of content discovery as well as the tactics and cutting-edge technologies they are using in their continuous attempts to lessen and get rid of the issues that still impede CTV and OTT customers’ content discovery experiences.
The Human Aspect of Content Creation: It’s Not Just AI
Though not all content companies are giving up on humans having a role in choosing what consumers want to see, the general trend of industry buzz over the last 18 to 24 months would probably persuade even the most cynical observer that the smart money is on AI when it comes to hyper-personalizing the content discovery experience and that it’s time for humans to step aside and accept defeat.
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We have teams—local teams—in all of our regions that are scheduling and curating content for their local markets, which is really meaningful to us. I think they know best what is relevant in their markets because they are closest to the cultural zeitgeist in their market. At the same time, these teams are not just content aficionados—they are deeply versed in all of the data and all of the consumption, says Katrina Kowalski, SVP of international content programming and acquisitions at Pluto TV.
The combination of “art and science” in content curation is crucial, according to Monica Williams, SVP of digital products and operations for NBCUniversal’s content distribution business. Williams famously told Streaming Media in a July/August 2024 interview that “metadata is my jam.” However, on a larger scale for NBCUniversal as a publisher, she says, “We’re leaning into enriched metadata because we recognize the importance of the algorithmic science portion and being able to tap into that. But there’s also the human piece. We really do believe in the art and the science: the human and the machine working together. A lot of this goes back to ways that we can help unburden our partners to be able to provide the best experience in their device or on their platform. And whether it’s the human curation or algorithm recommendation, we’re covering both.”
“What can we do to provide the most descriptive metadata around our content? Because I’m also coming from a distribution product POV, I believe our job is very consumer-centric in terms of how we make this experience better for the end viewer.” Williams says that when it comes to content discovery and offering a curated consumer experience, the most important question to ask is, “How do we get them into watching content as fast and as easy as possible? What are the things that we can do to work with our distribution and platform partners to make that easier and provide a seamless experience?”
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“The thing that we’re looking for,” says Chris Rodriguez, chief content officer at Revry, “is being featured via editorial moments. Their success is our success. So, the better that they are at being able to target either individual pieces of content or channels like ours, the better for us as well.” Revry is a “don’t-call-it-a-niche” producer, curator, aggregator, and network that serves targeted LGBTQ+ content for a global streaming and FAST audience. While they collaborate with major platforms like Samsung and Peacock, they face many of the same obstacles that other independents face when trying to gain visibility in an increasingly crowded content—and content discovery—marketplace.
You can’t be wrong, 88 million Samsung TV viewers
“How do you compete against a device manufacturer when you need them to help you with the discovery process?” asks Pfaff. Samsung TV Plus recently surpassed 88 million monthly active viewers, raising concerns that CTV is consolidating around a few major players and that FAST and other content providers will need to play nice with the major operating systems and other platforms to maintain their visibility and discoverability.
The success of discoverability in general is that you need to have a really strong distribution network, whether it’s where your app is or where your channels are. And I don’t think it stops there. You certainly need an amazing product. You also need marketing more broadly outside of the connected TV zone only because it’s actually quite expensive. Kowalski insists, as Rodriguez does with Revry, that Pluto TV’s relationship with companies like Samsung TV is not a competitive one, so the device’s seemingly unchecked growth doesn’t pose any kind of existential threat.
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Collaborating to Prevent the Arms Race in Content Development
Revry’s Rodriguez agrees that discovery has never been about going it alone and standing out by producing copious quantities of original content; it’s also about leveraging strategic partnerships. “The discovery of Revry was actually achieved through partnerships with all of the emerging FAST networks. We were an early partner of Pluto in 2017, and that’s how we got our feet wet in this space. One of the biggest, most appealing things early on was the fact that we didn’t have to play the content arms race that Netflix was perpetuating, which we couldn’t do. We couldn’t afford all this content, but on FAST, we didn’t have to because there are only 24 hours in a day, so you really just have to fill your daytime programmingwith something that’s compelling. So, we were really drawn to it, and then we saw the emergence of a lot of other networks. Of course, we are expanding and marketing direct-to-consumer, but we’ve actually subsisted largely over the past several years on just marketing within the CTV environments and riding the coattails of a lot of these bigger mainstream platforms that are carrying our channels.”
Connecting with Generation Z and the Influence of Podcasting
In order to bridge “the gap between our screens and social lives,” Gatsby Frimpong, CEO and co-founder of Gatsby TV, an emerging AI-driven content-finding app, aims to bring “all your streaming services into one place where they can be easily searched and combines what you’re viewing on each one into a unique recommendation algorithm.” According to Frimpong, getting a head start in CTV content discovery means making sure your content is discoverable on all of the platforms where viewers consume content, which for Gen Z and other younger-skewing demographics means the variety of mobile devices under the iOS and Android umbrellas.
“From a technological perspective, this is very challenging, dealing with different environments.” “At the end of the day, one of the things that we’re trying to do is make sure that our users have a pervasive and ubiquitous experience, whether it’s on mobile, on TV, or on their laptop, because the majority of media content isn’t being consumed on the TV—it’s being consumed on the phone. So, we have a very specific emphasis on making sure that we’re available there.” “Our CTV folks will be the Android phone makers and Apple iOS as our CTV.
Even though TikTok and user-generated content (UGC) account for the majority of the content that younger viewers consume, TV-centric content providers must focus more on the kind of content that these viewers are consuming and the devices that they are using. This means producing short-form content that appeals to these viewers and plays and is visible on smartphones and tablets.
Frimpong explains, “What we’re seeing is that Millennials and Gen Zs are on their phones watching seven hours a day on TikTok and these types of things.” “One of the things that the traditional providers need to look at is having short-form content. It’s quite a lot to ask someone to watch one thing for thirty minutes at a time. These short-form providers are providing [30-second clips], but somehow end up getting thirty minutes of your time. And that’s quite interesting.”
“The longtail is actually now becoming the shorttail,” he argues, adding that podcasts like Call Her Daddy, Joe Rogan, and others were once niche but are now in the mainstream. “Being able to give people those sorts of things and then other things that are similar to that takes them from not only being longtail to shorttail and takes you from grabbing 30 seconds of your time to 30 minutes, an hour, or two hours of time.” Frimpong sees an even more significant shift in the type of content that emerges as different types of media increasingly take precedence.
“For promotion and marketing, I think they’re great. We’re plotting a release of our first true-scripted long-form original at the beginning of the year, and working with existing podcast networks is part of that strategy, and we’re also releasing miniseries or side-series that I think could help promote it.” Rodriguez, who works at Revry, agrees that podcasting is valuable for content discovery strategy, at least to some extent. “Early in the company, we created a podcast network. We had Revry Podcast pretty early on, and we had some good talent within our community, and they were relatively successful. But at least from a FAST perspective, they didn’t really work. Visually, it wasn’t super-compelling content,” Rodriguez says.
“We’ve found quite a lot of success marketing on audio platforms,” Kowalski of Pluto TV says, “but it needs to be compelling from a visual perspective. There are a lot of really terrific podcasts out there that have really animated, recognizable hosts that I think people would watch. There are a couple of football players right now who have a tremendous podcast. There’s definitely opportunity, but we would need to make it so that it’s appealing both audio and visually.” Kowalski largely agrees with Rodriguez regarding the value of podcasts in terms of increasing a company’s content profile on the marketing side, not necessarily working on their own as marketable TV-type content.
Examining Viewing Behavior in Greater Detail
The fundamental challenge, according to Chris Pfaff, is identifying patterns in their previous viewing behavior and using that recognition to predict their next actions. “We’re all trying to grapple with the issue of what people watch, how they watch, when they watch it, and how shifts [in viewing behavior] occur,” Pfaff says, “through sentiment analysis and things like that.” This is true regardless of the strategy used to try to reach viewers by promoting content they’ll like and making it visible and readily accessible.
“We’re looking at when people are most interested in watching and looking at even the heuristics of content itself—’Oh, there’s the car chase at the 62nd minute or whatever.'” Pfaff contends that it’s often about deepening that analysis, looking beyond the shows viewers choose to the aspects of the shows that captivate them. But are content companies currently pursuing such in-depth explorations “to enable the discovery side,” helping viewers get more quickly to watching TV shows “rather than going through the carousel for 20 minutes?”
“One of the things that we’ve been looking at from an AI perspective is recommending [shows] based on mood.” “In the research that we’ve done, the word ‘mood’ came up every single time. So instead of recommending things based on what you’ve watched historically, or if you want something in a specific genre, we ask, ‘What mood are you in today?’ And that’s how we decide what we want to show you as a user. To do that, we’ve had to use natural-language processing across 600,000 different movies and TV shows to figure out what TV shows or movies solicit specific moods.
Although the enabling technology has advanced significantly, Rodriguez of Revry says that mood-based discovery recommendations have been a part of the AVOD world for a while. “Early on at Revry,” he says, “we were part of a think tank with a group of other niche streamers. There was a company called Blue Fever, and they really pushed mood-based viewing. They used to actually text their subscribers and ask them how they were feeling, and that’s how they suggested content.
“I do think people pick programs based on how they want to feel,” Kowalski says, adding that Pluto TV also uses mood as a weather vane for what viewers want to watch. “Do they want to laugh? Do they want to cry? Do they want to learn something? FAST over-indexes in several of the key need states, including things like comfort or togetherness. Do they want to watch a movie? Do they want to be immersed in a paranormal series? These are things that you might not have discovered before. So, I really believe in this area and understanding how people engage.”
Williams of NBCUniversal says, “We’ve done a lot of research around what actually happened in the moment when a viewer is trying to choose content, and what we found is interesting. At the same time, the viewer is anticipating how they expect to feel, what they expect to see, and does that match with the mood and what they’re feeling?”
Williams explains that while it is one thing for a recommendation engine to create a personalized channel based on viewing history, it does not necessarily consider the viewer’s current state of mind. “Context is very important. You could create the Monica Williams channel,” she says, referencing similarities to her previous viewing choices and preferences, “but that Monica Williams channel is going to look different on a Monday morning versus a Friday evening because of different need states, what I’m expecting to do, and how I feel. It’s all going to play a part.”
“We think a lot about that, but for us, it’s also about making sure that we’re preserving the creative intent of the content that’s representing our brand and really tie into the creative,” Williams says, adding that NBCUniversal considers all of these contextual factors and more when working to improve the discovery experience. “We think about the metadata and how to make sure that you have the right structure to maintain that through this complex ecosystem and ultimately make it to the viewer. So, that’s all part of our day-to-day consideration.
Optimizing High-Traffic Areas and Hot Zones
Making efficient use of “hot zones” and “high-traffic areas,” the noticeable and public-facing sections of an EPG where viewers are likely to land first or most frequently, and filling them with the appropriate featured content, is one of the fundamental content management concerns that may have a significant impact on discovery.
“We have carousels, we have featured sections for our EPG, and then of course on the VOD side, we’re making sure to cu-rate rails that feature things that we want people to notice first,” Kowalski says of Pluto TV. “There’s no one-size-fits-all approach, so even if you think about the tagging behind the scenes, it’s important to have as broad an offering of all the genres as possible because maybe I want to laugh, but I don’t want to watch Cheers, I want to watch a different kind of comedy, like FailArmy, for instance.
However, too much content can also be a hindrance. In addition to being perhaps the most discussed problem in recitations of streaming’s content discovery problems, content saturation can also make it harder for quality content to reach its audience when it is crowded out or hidden by other content that has easier access to visibility.
Rodriguez explains, “We live in a world where there can be a fantastic hit-quality show that is just loved by the people, by their fans, and it does not reach the success parameters of the network, and it gets canceled.” “We hear that all the time, and actually we hear it all the time with regard to content that tends to be genre or niche. For example, LGBTQ people within our community are always in upheaval over the cancellation of some show that they love, like Dead Boys Club or the Queer as Folk reboot. The problem is that these things fade into thin air and never have a chance to find their audience.”
“I love what’s happening right now where people are loosening the strings and allowing these things to live in other places where they could potentially find their audience.” “But at the end of the day, Netflix still owns that show. If they were to license it to us and it was a huge hit, they could totally pull it back and then be like, “You can only watch it on Netflix.” It made us a little money. It got us a little viewership. It builds value for the brand. So, I’m hoping to see that more in the future,” Rodriguez says.
Williams argues that most efforts to address the friction in content discovery should have the common goal of delivering better experiences because, in the end, whether it’s about the audience finding the content or the content finding the audience, it all comes down to the experiences viewers have when they go looking for shows to watch. “Content discovery is the problem, but we should really think about the content experience in a broader view,” she says, “How do we make this the best experience? The discovery part for the viewers should really be invisible if you do this right way. In an ideal state, you’re getting them into the content they want in that moment by serving content that matches their anticipation of how they’re going to feel.”
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