Metrological, which provides a ready-made app store so Pay TV operators can onboard streaming services, has evolved its offering to ensure that the content inside apps can be easily surfaced through the operator UI, including within search, voice search and recommendations. This responds to the increasing use of streaming services, with consumers seeking access to the content within apps rather than necessarily the apps themselves.
Vodafone Germany is the first example of where Metrological has taken more responsibility for making app content ubiquitous. The Pay TV operator chose Metrological to provide access to premium OTT services on its GigaTV platform and these are made available via its universal search.
The Metrological App Library offers more than 300 TV apps and the Metrological Application Platform includes a back-office product suite for onboarding, monetising and optimising the lifecycle of web and native apps across set-top boxes. The Application Platform supports features such as unified search, contextuality and second screen support.
Thijs Bijleveld, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Metrological, explains: “Until now, we provided a portal that shows the app icons but now we provide an ‘a la carte’ menu to operators. They can have the store with app tiles, but we can also provide the APIs that will let someone link directly to an asset [streaming app content] or give a recommendation system access to an asset. You can now display these content assets anywhere you want in the UI.
“We see a definite trend in ‘apps-land’ where the app in its present form is becoming less relevant. The end-consumer does not care where the content comes from or whether it is live or on-demand – they just want to watch the show and they want the service provider to present it to them.”
Bijleveld says this approach will help operators remain relevant to their consumers. “This is the kind of thing that improves net promoter scores and has a positive impact on churn. We take responsibility for provisioning the streaming services, but we are more deeply embedded into the content discovery experience,” he says.
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