The role of innovative technology in monetising content by delivering it to more people more efficiently

With the proliferation of smartphones, tablets, streaming players, connected televisions and other high-bandwidth connected devices, today’s audiences demand information and entertainment anywhere, anytime, on any screen. Content owners could meet that demand using clever, cost-effective, highly automated systems that have the potential to make it feasible and profitable to distribute all kinds of content. However, many content owners currently rely on home-grown and unnecessarily complex content management and distribution solutions that require excessive manual manipulation — and often capital investment — which reduces efficiency and cost-effectiveness. In fact, these inefficiencies often undermine business viability and viewer access, especially if the actual ‘value’ of the content is unknown. To overcome these challenges and make the most of their assets, content owners must implement technologies that streamline content management and distribution for over the top (OTT) direct targeting of consumers. Fully automated, rule-based, online publishing solutions exist today that target the most popular consumer technologies. Where possible, cloud technology — elastically scalable resources — can also be leveraged to minimise capital costs and streamline workflows. This paper will describe the capabilities of new, highly efficient, automated OTT publishing systems, including technology advances in online, viewer-targeted publishing and best practices for metadata transport, migration, encoding, transcoding and cloud-based deployments. The paper will focus on practical application, with consideration for interoperability, sustainability and return on investment.