Utelly announces Horizon 2020 data project with Altice Labs in Portugal; Expands operations in the EU
April 2, 2019
Utelly, a provider of video search and curation services, today announced that it will collaborate with Altice Labs in Portugal, a division of the largest telecom operator in Portugal, on an Horizon 2020 project to determine TV viewer recommendations, based on set-top boxes’ subscriber behavioral data. The project, sponsored by the European Union’s research and innovation program, will carry on for most of 2019 and, after its conclusion, the two companies may elect to continue their partnership. Utelly will process a large sample dataset of anonymized TV consumption data from Altice Portugal set-top box users to help the TV operator gain a better understanding of data science for the benefit of their customers.
Separately, Utelly announced that it is expanding its European operations, and will open up a new headquarters office in Amsterdam next month. Utelly’s London operations will remain intact, and the company will increase its staff to support its growing EU business with telcos, broadcast and cable operators, and other media companies.
By coupling research and innovation, Horizon 2020 is helping to achieve smart, sustainable and inclusive growth with its emphasis on excellent science, industrial leadership and tackling societal challenges. The goal is to ensure Europe produces world-class science, removes barriers to innovation and makes it easier for the public and private sectors to work together in delivering innovation.
Utelly offers a global direct-to-consumer (DTC) search and discovery platform and app for video service providers. The company enables pay TV operators and others in the ecosystem, such as set-top box manufacturers, to quickly offer DTC services. Utelly has previously announced that a large UK operator will go live with its solution in the first half of 2019.
“We are beginning to understand how to deliver richer, more granular content to TV subscribers in ways that were not possible even five years ago, due to the growing sophisticated of artificial intelligence, and we have an ideal opportunity to advance the industry’s knowledge base for the greater benefit of TV viewers across Europe, and beyond,” said Romain Eude, founder and CEO of Utelly. “Utelly looks forward to jointly creating a set of data, with Altice Labs in Portugal, that offers greater insights into the delivery of curated content recommendations. We are grateful for this Horizon 2020 opportunity and see this as a natural extension of our expanding EU presence.”
According to TiVo Insights, viewers spend an average of 28 minutes a day searching for content, resulting in viewer time wasted and consumer disappointment. With the Utelly platform, viewers can leverage the search and discovery app to curate content on the go and more efficiently prepare their entertainment plans. Using enhanced artificial intelligence (AI) features, Utelly-powered search can, for example, enable operators to recommend more intelligent offerings for customers, and deliver more sophisticated search through specific contextual signifiers.
Utelly’s technology delivers rich recommendation features for customers, combining intelligent metadata management and aggregation across all video services, enabling smart promotion of content. It is available as a white label app and as a set of APIs for enterprise integration.
Utelly’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) technology will enable global service providers to quickly search and discover the content they desire across all devices and network functions.