Enhancing and Re-Purposing TV Content for Trans-Vector Engagement

Project Information

ReTV

Grant agreement ID: 780656

DOI

10.3030/780656

Project closed

EC signature date 21 November 2017

Start date 1 January 2018

End date 31 March 2021

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 3 489 650,00

EU contribution

€ 3 489 650,00

Coordinated by

MODUL TECHNOLOGY GMBH
Austria

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ReTV (Enhancing and Re-Purposing TV Content for Trans-Vector Engagement)

Reporting period: 2019-07-01 to 2021-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

ReTV's objective is to re-invent TV for the interactive age. We aim to provide broadcasters and content distributors with technologies and insights to leverage the converging digital media landscape. Viewing of linear broadcast TV is decreasing while time spent with digital content on Catchup TV, on-demand OTT or social media rises. Broadcaster audiences are fragmented across digital channels, which are full of competing content. The TV industry has to catch up with online competition in web technology: user tracking, personalisation and targeting. ReTV will provide tools to compete in the digital ecosystem and maximise the success of content publication. The Trans-Vector Platform (TVP) will provide stakeholders with the ability to “publish to all media vectors with the effort of one”. The Trans Vector Platform is a collection of systems that covers all use cases of Trans Vector Publishing. By using a modular architecture the TVP can easily be extended, integrated into existing workflows and create synergies between systems.

At the conclusion of the project, we have delivered the full TVP as a set of components, services and data stores as well as four end user applications which use the TVP: the Topics Compass, the Content Wizard, the 4u2 Messenger and the 4u2 Smart Speaker Skill.
We have also agreed on a continuing dissemination and exploitation strategy to ensure the full impact of the project results for media organizations.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

We have delivered the final Trans Vector Platform (TVP), integrating components and services for data collection, annotation, analysis, query and visualisation. This platform enables data-driven solutions to provide content re-purposing and recommendation functionalities in order to optimise the publication of media content on the Web and social media.

WP1: we delivered i) a data ingestion pipeline that collects data across different vectors; ii) technologies to annotate video data; iii) technologies specifically for detecting brands in the video stream; and iv) a common content metadata model that makes the content and the metadata (annotations etc.) accessible to the ReTV use-case applications, in particular through a Semantic Knowledge Base.

WP2: we completed our hybrid approach to the ReTV predictive analytics (which saw a final update in D4.3 in M36) based on the complete and finalised approaches to event, content success metrics and audience metrics extraction.

WP3: we built a complete pipeline, ready for integration into the use cases, to support content adaptation and re-purposing (T3.3) and recommendation and scheduling (T3.4).

WP4: we completed all planned extensions and revisions of the Trans-Vector Platform (TVP). The final version of the TVP combines the technical results from the project partners into a comprehensive modular platform, enabling broadcasters, media archives and other digital content owners to tap into the next generation of digital content publication.

WP5: we successfully delivered two fully functioning and market-ready applications for broadcasters and media archives. The applications were evaluated via two rounds of user testing. Prototypes were presented to and validated with 15 media professionals.

WP6: the following three prototypes were (further) developed: 4u2 Messenger, 4u2 Smart Speaker Skill and Video Summarization Web Service.

WP7: we successfully promoted the project and grew their audience via digital communication channels, exceeding the target impact numbers in cases. The ReTV Stakeholder Forum and Advisory Board is established with 56 and 5 members respectively. During this period, partners hosted three stakeholder meetings.
In particular, D7.4 “Business and Exploitation Plan” laid out the post-project exploitation.

WP8: The main achievement of WP8 was the correct and effective administrative and financial management of the project from day one to the end of the project (and afterwards). This is reflected first of all in this Technical Report, submitted on time alongside the Financial Reports.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The impact will be to future-proof European broadcasters, who need to adapt to the new digital content ecosystem and compete with new pure-play and OTT competitors. Right now, they lack the right tools for this - the tools that ReTV can provide through the Trans-Vector Platform.

The TVP will help organizations re-distribute their media assets optimally on new vectors. Our Content Wizard application is the showcase of how media organizations can access the functionality of the trans-vector publication workflow, which covers both the re-purposing and re-publication of content from their media asset collections in a guided, semi-automatic manner. The choice to develop this tool on top of an existing commercial software (Levuro Engage) ensures the market readiness of the result, meaning our trans-vector publication capabilities are immediately available to media organizations for professional use. This has been backed up by the user tests with professionals in media organizations as well as the initial leads we have generated by project end (where a number of companies outside of the consortium have already contacted us for trial access). Present experience of Levuro with Engage clients has backed up our experiences with these organizations, where the trans-vector functionality has already made more efficient and effective their social media publication activities.

The final Topics Compass and Content Wizard releases cover the full end to end trans-vector publication workflow: data collection and annotation (visible in the Topics Compass), prediction (visible in both), enhancement, scheduling, publication and measurement (available in the Content Wizard). In our innovation management process, we were continually aware of competing products and their functionality and focused on the USPs of the ReTV approach (multi-dimensional measurement of communication success, predictive analytics for publication success, video re-purposing for social media, recommendation algorithm for uni- and multi-cast publication of media). So whereas the Topics Compass and Content Wizard already demonstrate a significant improvement in functionality for digital content production, the 4u2 messenger and smart speaker skill reflect an unique offer for personalised media content distribution where the vector is the messenger platform or smart speaker, unlike other tools (including Content Wizard) which focus on publication to the Web and social networks. These 4u2 tools have proven to be of particular interest to the creative industries as they look for new opportunities to bring their media assets to an audience outside of the (overpopulated and not under their control) Web platforms and social networks.

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