AI and the golden rule of content discovery
What might be described as the “golden rule” or “Platonic ideal” of content discovery on CTV and OTT is “the right content, the right user, the right moment,” as Dataxis Principal Analyst Ophélie Boucaud suggests in this clip from Streaming Media Connect, while Xperi VP & GM Content Discovery Chris Ambrozic offers AI-enhanced best practices for getting there and Hub Entertainment Research Principal Jon Giegengack discusses what gets platforms and services closest to achieving this goal.
Understanding viewer intent
Boucaud shares, “The golden rule of discovery would be the right content, the right user, the right moment,” but that trifecta is difficult to achieve on TV. Reducing friction is paramount. “How do we figure out how to balance this goal? How do we get to this golden rule where all three aspects are actually managed, and where do we start?” she asks Ambrozic.
He replies, “I think this comes down to … understanding viewer intent. And when you say that the right content, the right user, the right moment, I really think it’s ‘the right moment.’ This is the toughest challenge.” There is “tons of content,” but it’s necessary to understand “the intent of the user as they sit down on the couch or as they open their phone—whatever the device they’re using—and knowing and capturing very quickly … the goal of that user.”
Tracking browsing habits
Viewers want to get to the content they’re watching quickly, Ambrozic notes. “And effectively, our job as the discovery solution is to maybe get out of the way because they’re not really there to browse a ton. They just want to get to their content.” He provides some data: The Continue Watching option always has the “highest click-through rate on the platforms that we power, about 25% click-through rate.”
On weekends, people are more willing to browse than they are on weekdays. “The moment at which they end a show, 70% of the time that represents a churn risk that somebody finishes a show and then makes the conclusion, ‘There’s nothing more for me here. I’m going to go somewhere else.’ That is a critical moment to keep them. So I think what you have to do is, you have to understand the intent. You have to know these moments.” AI can help with understanding when people are in the mood to browse, Ambrozic says.
Streamlining the discovery journey
Boucaud turns to Giegengack. “Do you have any takes on who is managing this best? Maybe you can tell us about platforms or services that manage to capture this intent and actually raise engagements with it,” she requests.
Giegengack admits, “I don’t know if anybody has really nailed it yet, but our research agrees completely with what [Ambrozic] just said.” The research “looked at what is it that makes an app most valuable to a subscriber,” including all types of apps beyond TV viewing. “And they said that one of the things that is a hallmark of a really valuable app is that it opens and you see already the thing that you came there to do,” he notes. “[With] TikTok, there is no discovery journey. There are no sort of rows of tiles. You just open it up and a video starts playing, and you either keep watching it or you don’t like it and you scroll away. But either way, the algorithm starts to zero in on why you’re there, along with all the other information that it had before.”
Clearing the clutter
The research showed that for TV apps, people don’t like the “storefront” approach, Giegengack says. That means “showing you a bunch of other things that you might like, but you have to scroll down pretty far until you find the stuff that you were there in the first place to get. And the … biggest frustration that people had was that most of the time, they want to keep watching what they were watching before, and they have to sift through a lot of other options before they get there.”
Giegengack believes AI will help with this as well—understanding what a viewer is looking for, and “not cluttering up their experience with a lot of content that might be great, but if it’s not why they’re there immediately, it’s getting in the way.”
Giegengack continues, “And especially for younger people where they’re comparing their experience on TV apps to using YouTube or to using TikTok, that difference is even more jarring, and they already know that there’s more stuff than they could possibly watch. They don’t need to see rows and rows and rows of things to convince them of that. They’re much more interested in having a more lean interface that is dedicated just to the stuff that’s personalised for them or that they’re going to be the most interested in.”
Join us November 9–11, 2026 for more thought leadership, actionable insights, and lively debate at Streaming Media Connect 2026! Registration is open!
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