By Roland Sars, CEO of Media Distillery
“People are not here to buy AI. They are looking for solutions to problems.”
This is the favourite saying of our Head of Product, Martin Prins, and it was frequently heard at the Media Distillery stand during IBC 2024. We don’t sell off-the-shelf AI tools that require heavy customization by a broadcaster or Pay TV operator’s own in-house team. As the hundreds of visitors to our stand saw in our demos, our tailored solutions directly address real industry needs, with AI as the enabler for improving content discovery and viewer retention.
There was an AI story to tell on almost every vendor stand, but much of it was limited to auto-transcription and auto-subtitling. While these capabilities have their place, they don't fully address the needs of our customers. The companies we spoke to during the show were laser focused on customer retention which means keeping their customers engaged with high-quality UX as this directly affects Net Promoter Score (NPS) and churn.
At Media Distillery, we focus on enhancing every step of the viewer’s journey within a video platform. Whether it’s generating tailored previews, ensuring content starts at the right moment, or helping users jump to the topic that interests them most in a longer show, we’re helping operators create seamless experiences that keep viewers engaged and satisfied. Our solutions are designed to reduce “time to content,” meaning viewers can quickly find the content they love, rather than spending 10 to 20 frustrating minutes (or more!) of their precious evening scrolling through endless options.
Another differentiator for Media Distillery is that we aren’t using AI as a way to reduce headcount. Instead, we automate processes and solve problems it simply wasn’t possible to address before. Accurately identifying the start and end time of every advertising break in every TV show on every channel would be impossibly time-consuming for humans to achieve at scale, which is why they’ve not been done until now. In fact, I’d estimate that around 90% of what we do is not replacing existing technology or people; it’s creating new opportunities to enhance the viewer experience.
An excellent example of how our AI solves real-world problems is Topic Distillery, which won two CSI Awards and a prestigious BaM Award at the show. CSI Magazine named it the Best Implementation of Generative AI in Video, while the new sports variant of the solution won Best Advance in Content Discovery. This success was driven by our ability to personalize content discovery in a way that keeps viewers on the platform longer, engages them more deeply, and gives them the tools to navigate content easily.
Topic Distillery for Sports, in particular, showcased how AI can transform the viewing experience by automatically tagging live broadcasts and allowing fans to follow specific teams, players, or sports moments. The jury at the BaM Awards crowned it the winner of their Consume category. They praised the solution’s ability to reduce the frustration viewers feel when searching for relevant content and called it “A tangible use of AI... A great application of AI to increase the viewership and VOD potential of live content.” Both awards noted the success of our pilot project of this solution with Liberty Global.
BaM Awards ceremony
Martin spoke a lot about Topic Distillery on the Content Everywhere stage at IBC in a panel all about the importance of UX in winning and keeping viewers. You can watch highlights here.
But the glory wasn’t all reserved for Topic Distillery, another of our solutions, Ad-Break Distillery was honoured with a Best of Show award from TVB Europe. This award recognized the solution’s ability to identify the precise start and end times of ad breaks in live video broadcasts. This allows for more effective monetisation of catch-up and replay formats through options such as paid ad-skipping or replacing ads in replays with commercials of higher/more lasting value. It also enables operators to reuse broadcast content archives for FAST and AVOD platforms.
This year’s IBC was also the debut of Preview Distillery, our latest AI-powered solution that generated a lot of buzz and great feedback from visitors to our stand. Preview Distillery creates short, tailored video clips that fit seamlessly into a platform’s existing content library. These previews allow viewers to quickly see whether a piece of content is what they’re looking for.
It’s all about keeping the viewer interested and eliminating frustration, reducing browsing fatigue and time to content. Previews are becoming increasingly important and with our new solution streaming services can have them on their site very soon after the live broadcast of a show, driving replay viewing and improving the overall UX.
At IBC, we celebrated the 10th anniversary of Media Distillery. We’ve come a long way in 10 years, and we’re committed to staying at the forefront of AI innovation. While many companies are still exploring how AI can automate simple tasks, we’re focused on delivering solutions that solve real problems for both viewers and operators.
If you couldn’t make it to IBC, we’d be happy to give you a demo of Topic Distillery, Ad-Break Distillery, Preview Distillery or our highly-valued Time Marker Suite including EPG-Correction Distillery.
September 30, 2024
