Untangling Streaming: Responses to a Huge Web Search Fail
July 22, 2020
More and more users rely on a patchwork of internet streaming services for their video entertainment. Anyone who subscribes to several of these knows the time-wasting tedium of combing through different menus, each with a different UI, just to find something to watch. With even more proprietary streaming services on the horizon, it seems that problem is poised to grow. However, there are at least two apps that provide viable solutions—Reelgood and JustWatch. “These Two Underdog Apps Have Solved Streaming TV’s Biggest Headache,” Fast Company observes. Writer Jared Newman reports:
“Instead of making you bounce between disparate apps, both services can tell you what’s available on practically any streaming service. You can then add movies and shows to a watch list, get more suggestions based on your viewing habits, and even load their apps on your television to use as a centralized streaming menu. Compared to the app overload of most streaming devices, the universal guides offered by JustWatch and Reelgood seem like the ideal way to watch TV in the streaming era.”
Sounds helpful. But why does it take “underdog” apps to do what common sense suggests devices like Roku and Amazon Fire TV should already offer? There are several business reasons, we’re told, like Netflix’s resistance to the aggregation of its content or the fact that streaming services pay for placement on those platforms. As for Reelgood and JustWatch, they each have their own business models. It comes as no surprise that each involves user data. Newman writes:
“JustWatch says that … about 70% of its revenue comes from targeting users with movie trailers based on their viewing habits. For every movie or TV show users click on, JustWatch builds up a taste profile, then separates users into anonymized groups based on what they might like. Movie studios such as Universal and Paramount then give JustWatch a budget to target users with relevant video trailers on sites like Facebook and YouTube. … Reelgood, meanwhile, started from more of a Silicon Valley mindset of building up the product first and finding ways to monetize it later. Sanderson, a former ad product manager at Facebook, initially thought that would take the shape of recommendation-style targeted ads within the service, but lately the company’s been leaning more into selling access to its data.”
See the write-up for more on the business considerations and plans for each of these entities, big and small. There are other notable players in this arena, including TV Time, Simkl, Watchworthy, Wander, and VUniverse. It will be interesting to see where the market, and the technology, go from here.
Cynthia Murrell, July 22, 2020
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