Quickplay optimizes storefront search and discovery with generative AI

Quickplay Brings Generative AI to Programmers to Optimize Storefront Search and Discovery Tools

TORONTO, Ontario — Quickplay is using the power of Generative AI to help content programming teams drive deeper discovery into their content libraries with a new product that continues the company’s innovation partnership with Google Cloud.

At Google Cloud Next ‘24 and the NAB Show this month Quickplay is unveiling a Curator Assistant that turbocharges programming teams’ ability to expedite connections between consumers and relevant content. Building on Quickplay’s successful debut of its AI-powered Media Companion at IBC 2023, the Curator Assistant’s thorough search capabilities enable creation of storefront rails that contain more titles that engage consumer interest; and can be programmed faster, offering up valuable programmer time.

“OTT providers’ programming teams are the unsung heroes of content search,” said Paul Pastor, CBO and Co-Founder of Quickplay. “Curator Assistant gives them increased power to put the greatest assortment of relevant titles front and center before viewers. Programmers will no longer be limited by their own or licensed metadata – they can literally leverage the entire Internet, with conversational search, to program their service and drive more discovery opportunities that are personalized to the user or cohort.”

Curator Assistant leverages Generative AI to help programmers discover new opportunities to merchandize their content. With Curator Assistant integrated into the Quickplay CMS, programming teams can conversationally engage with the tool to set up rails aligned with topical or seasonal content or passion verticals that address viewers’ personal interests. Google Vertex AI leverages Large Language Models (LLMs) to return results that tap into a much broader database than traditional metadata tagging. Query results are matched in the Quickplay CMS against available content rights and user profiles, resulting in content presentation that is both surprising and relevant. These innovations are enabled by a modular, cloud based, open-AI platform architecture that plugs into AI marketplaces with ease and time-to-market advantages.

Curator Assistant doubles down on Quickplay’s commitment to optimizing AI-driven search, discovery and personalization. Media Companion’s debut at IBC put conversational interaction directly into the hands of viewers by using LLMs to provide deeper insights into content libraries; Curator Assistant empowers programming teams to ensure increased Storefront visibility for topics and titles of interest by:

• Providing a natural language interface for assisted discovery, including catalog browsing, filtering, and cross-referencing assets.
• Augmenting content metadata with additional insights, including micro-genre descriptors, emotional tags, and embeddings to strengthen results.
• Determining natural content breakpoints to identify binge markers and ad-breaks that can improve usability and expand monetization.
• Auto-generating content rails based on results extracted from the catalog and further refining results based on a variety of engagement metrics.
• Personalizing content carousels based on individual taste preferences, content analyses, and consumption patterns.

Alongside Quickplay’s existing Streaming Analytics and A/B testing framework, these tools help content curators discover novel approaches to maximize audience engagement.

“Empowering curators to create dynamic storefronts with relevant and personalized content suggestions leveraging platforms like Vertex AI will drive more engagement, retention and monetization opportunities for clients,” said Juan Martin, Quickplay’s CTO and Co-Founder. “Our goal is to elevate a curator’s impact with this tool in surfacing content that would otherwise not have been captured through traditional metadata programming tools”.

“Our partnership with Quickplay emphasizes not only cutting-edge technology through Generative AI use cases but also thought leadership and expertise in optimizing the viewer experience,” says Anil Saboo, Director of Industry ISV Partnerships at Google Cloud. “Together, Google Cloud and Quickplay are setting new standards for the future of OTT, pushing boundaries and shaping the landscape of content delivery.”

In demonstrations at Google Cloud Next 2024 (April 9-11) and NAB Show 2024 (April 13-16), Quickplay will show how the integration of Generative AI with Quickplay’s CMS is leading the way to optimal search experiences. In addition, Quickplay will share thought leadership in Generative AI-powered content discovery via two presentations: Martin’s “Driving Viewer Engagement With AI-Powered Conversational Search” at Google Cloud Next and “Creating and implementing AI-powered Conversational Search to Drive Viewer Engagement” by Naveen Narayanan, Senior Director, Product Innovation and Strategy, at NAB 2024. Naveen’s presentation will be delivered at the Broadcasting Engineering and IT Conference “Application of Large Language Models (LLMs) in Media” at 11:30 AM Saturday, April 13 in Rooms W220-W221 of the Las Vegas Convention Center.