Customization & Curation: The Key to a Personalized Viewing Experience

By Chris Bassolino on July 26, 2017

One of the biggest underlying trends in the digital era is the demand for personalization and curation. Thousands of traditional cable subscribers have migrated to OTT platforms like HBO Go and Netflix, purely because of the curation component.

Curation gives content owners the ability to pick and choose their best pieces of content and distribute them through channels of interested and engaged viewers. In turn, viewers love that curation allows them to find the content they are interested in, without much thought or effort.

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OTT platforms such as HBO and Netflix have capitalized on viewer’s appetite for curation. They use their user’s viewing data to serve viewers customized playlists and content they are more likely to enjoy. Although not all of the content on HBO and Netflix is original, their strategy enables them to be selective and showcase their premium content in an intuitive and curated format.

Using smart playlists is an easy way for content owners to start curating their content library. You determine the parameters for your playlist, the most important thing is to keep your viewer engaged and scrolling through your content until they land on what they’re looking for.

People don’t want to search for their content and in most cases, they don’t even know what they want to watch. It’s up to the content owner to create content their viewers actually want to watch AND deliver it at the right time and place. Curation not only makes it easier for content owners to organize their library, it is also a vehicle for efficiently delivering engaging content to viewers.

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Building a curation feature into your OTT platform requires a delicate balance between creating new content, and reusing and repackaging old content. Use your video platform’s analytics and audience insights to inform your content. When you know how your viewers are engaging with content, it’s easy to serve them what they want, when they want it.

One of the major draws of an OTT platform is the curated content, something that traditional linear tv options lack. Not only do OTT leaders like Netflix curate their content, they also make relevant suggestions for new content based on the viewer’s behavior. Many people rely on their OTT platforms to discover new shows and movies that they would have otherwise never seen.

Viewers want niche, curated content. For example, Twitch, an OTT platform that lets viewers watch other people play video games and it has a huge market with over 45 million viewers. OTT gave Twitch the opportunity to access and cater to a mass audience with a specific unique interest.

Final Thoughts

As curation and customization have become the viewer’s expectation, it is increasingly important for content owners to smartly curate their content to specific segments of their audience.

As you continue to gather more data from your viewers and sharpen your insights, you’ll have the ability to create better audience segments and provide your viewers with even more curated content.

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Zype’s analytics platform and other features like smart sorting playlists and customized apps make it possible for content owners to offer the same curation and customization that made industry leaders such as Netflix, HBO Go and Hulu so successful.

Connect your video with viewers, everywhere.