Metadata is the structured information that describes content: title, synopsis, genre, cast and crew, release year, ratings, language and subtitle availability, artwork, and richer tags like mood, themes, and scene-level descriptors. It is the fuel for nearly every discovery feature.
Search relies on it, content-based recommendations are built from it, merchandising rows and the EPG draw on it, and rights and availability are tracked through it. Because discovery quality is capped by metadata quality, investing in clean, deep, consistent metadata - increasingly enriched automatically with AI - is one of the highest-leverage, least glamorous things an OTT platform can do for engagement.
