Consumption of Internet video is constantly rising. It is currently estimated that, globally, Internet video traffic will account for 55 percent of all consumer Internet traffic in 2016. This includes video-on-demand traffic (e.g. Netflix), which is estimated to triple by 2016. In 2007, Internet video advertising was a $400 million dollar market, while the TV advertising market at the time was $70 billion. In less than nine years, that number has grown significantly: a recent report from BI Intelligence predicts “online video ad revenue will reach nearly $5 billion in 2016 … while TV ad revenue will decline by nearly 3% per year during the same time period.” And as revenues go up, so does ad spend, with online video ad spend in the US accounting for more than 50% of global video ad spend in 2015, at $8.5 billion, compared to $4.14 billion in 2013.
 
Video publishers today lack the ability to tap into the full potential of online video due to the absence of metadata, which hinders the publishers from having correlations between videos and different consumers, and the consumers from finding the exact videos they want. In turn, this affects the monetization of the online videos. What is most attractive to advertisers today in online video is the ability to target, which means to get smarter about what ads are delivered to which audience. Regardless of how the online video advertising market will be shaped in the future, one thing is certain: data will be a valuable currency.
 
Metadata provides usable data and context to users. There are two types of metadata: automatically generated and human authored. Automatically generated metadata includes source metadata such as equipment used, date created, duration, format definition, shooting location, etc., as well as derived metadata like speech-to-text, facial recognition, scene detection and so on. User authored metadata is designed to give more data on the video that will help engage the audience and allow them to find comprehensive results for their searches. It can include information such as actors’ names, genre, description of the scene, rating, time stamped comments, etc.
 
Today, most metadata for online videos comes from machine-based metadata that has limited accuracy and gives only basic information, which is somewhat useless to the end consumer. The human authored metadata on online videos today is also very limited due to the various transcoding processes in the production workflow and the reliance on consumer entered metadata.
 
Applications that are based on metadata can unlock the potential of online video – AKA, monetize it. Such applications will allow more granular search results, even on the scene level including the intent of the scene (e.g. serene, suspense, etc.). It will also allow easy navigation between different files and scenes by adding additional relations between them and will allow easy sharing of virtual clips and playlists without compromising the original asset. User specific programming can be easily created and accurate analysis of user behaviors can be obtained. In-stream ads can be inserted with accuracy to videos, sub clips and playlists, which can be used for better targeted advertising.
 
The result is that the viewer has the freedom to sample more assets and navigate directly to the most interesting scenes, while the publisher is able to monetize that experience in the most effective way possible.
 
This metadata defines the optimal in-stream video ad insertion points, allowing publishers greater control and flexibility with their advertising strategies. In addition, the ads served in the precise insertion points can be targeted by third-party ad providers based on the scene metadata such as character name, player name, topic, keyword, etc.
 
In conclusion, we see that the success of online video relies, in part, on metadata. Publishers need to manage the creation of metadata as a part of the production of the video. Video is a complex medium that requires both automatically created metadata and human authored, which is more flexible and accurate, thus providing a fuller experience to the consumer. Higher quality metadata leads to a more engaged consumer, which means monetized video assets. Publishers need to incorporate media asset management systems that allow authoring and managing asset metadata in their production workflow in order to build engaged audiences and maximize the value of their internet advertising.