Guide to Increasing the

Value of Your Content

with Metadata
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Intro – What is Metadata

2 Metadata makes media content searchable

3 Metadata makes your content SEO friendly

4 Metadata helps you automate mundane tasks

5 Metadata increases the value of your content

6 Metadata increases the lifecycle of your media

7 Make Content Discoverable for Every Use with A.I.

8 Metadata & Innovation

Conclusion

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 CHAPTER ONE

Intro
What is Metadata?
 What is Metadata?

The common theme among our conversations with anybody who works with
or manages high quantities of content is that metadata is a life-saver. This
behind-the-scenes "data about data" can help you in a number of ways,
saving thousands of hours of monotonous tasks and allowing you to spend
more time doing what you do best!

Though metadata it is typically thought of as titles, tags, and descriptions of

images, there are numerous other types of code you can add to your content's
metadata, including copyright information and usage restrictions. This
information is then attached to the file and can be transported with it and
recognized by other software, hardware, and end-users.

The purpose of this guide is to show you the power of metadata and the value
it can bring into your life, for you and your files! Discover the basics of
metadata; how it can increase efficiency and boost your business.

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The infomation about a piece of media content can be embedded in the file as file
attributes in various standard formats, such as IPTC, EXIF and XMP. This makes
metadata transferable between different software packages. Embedded metadata
can facilitate downstream processing on the assets, or in other words, allows the
information to travel with the file.

‘To realize the value of a file, you need to

“
have additional information about that
asset. In short, you need metadata’

The Real Story Group

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 CHAPTER TWO

Metadata Makes Media

Content Searchable
 Media Content is Searchable
Metadata Makes Media Content Searchable

A fundamental function of your content's metadata is that it enables your files to be easily
found in your database. Locate what you want, when you want, and empower others to do
the same!

There are three categories of data which you can ascribe to your content:

• Administrative
• Descriptive
• Rights

The Administrative data relates to the more technical details of the image: who it was taken
by, when and where it was taken, what it was taken on, and even contact details for the
image licensor.
Descriptive data, on the other hand, provides information on the content of the image in the
form of titles, tags and keywords.
Finally, Rights denote any copyright information attached to the content, as well as terms of
use.

In most cases, it is the descriptive data which makes the content far more searchable
internally. Keywords and tags are particularly useful when dealing with vast sums of content,
and help to narrow down possible relevant options.

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 CHAPTER THREE

Metadata Makes Your

Content SEO friendly
 SEO Friendly Content
Metadata makes your content friendly for Search Enginge
Optimization

It is not only the case that metadata benefits your organization behind-the-scenes - it can also
be used to boost your discoverability through search!

Your public content's discoverability can be boosted through effective SEO. In much the same
way that you want to boost your website's ranking on Google, and do so by ensuring you
have your page titles and descriptions correctly formatted, and all relevant keywords present
in your website's copy, it's important not to neglect your images!

In fact, it's really not different at all! As Lydia Nicoll, founder of Natively, suggests:
"Strong SEO can actually be a fairly good indicator of share-ability. That’s because when
content is deemed valuable, easy-to-read, authentic, and authoritative, (which is actually
what SEO is) it’s the kind of stuff that people love!"

‘Metadata for photos is the same as an

“
<alt> tag on a photo for website
optimization – imagine the power when it’s
cleverly automated’
Radmila Milenkovich, Marketing Manager

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The main tenets of optimizing your image SEO can be divided
into two categories: preparing the image, and adding the
image to your site
Preparing the image starts with the file
name. It's key to make sure the file name
for your chosen image includes keywords,
starting with the main keyword - the file
name should absolutely not be a random
assortment of letters and/or numbers that
tells you nothing about the content of the
image!
Next, you need to ensure that your chosen
photo doesn't contribute to poor loading
times for your webpage. If you're
uploading a large image (e.g 2500x1500),
but displaying it as a smaller version
(250x150), DON'T! Scaling your image to
the size at which it will be displayed will
help save loading time, which in turn
impacts your site's overall SEO.
Finally, reducing the file size of your newly
scaled image is key and can be done
without compromising the quality of your
image (example tools)
When it comes to adding your images,
you'll notice how similar it is to the SEO
processes which you're probably already
very familiar with.
The importance of captions for your
content is enormous, as these are key
focal points for anybody scanning your
webpage before truly delving in and
reading. That's not to say every image
requires a caption, and you must decide
whether you think it will benefit the reader
and help to pique their interest, or whether
it would simply be an unnecessary
addition, cluttering up your page.
Following captions is Alt text - it's a phrase
you may have seen regularly, but never
understood the point of its existence. Well,
you're not alone.
Essentially, alt text is displayed when, for
one reason or another, your image can't
be. Instead of a blank space, alt text
enables you to provide a small description,
which should also include the keyword for
the page.
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In the screenshot below we can see a combination of both descriptive metadata as
‘autumn’, ‘board’ and administrative (guiding our campaign) as ‘ grand opening’ ,
‘coffee break’.

“
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 CHAPTER FOUR

Metadata Helps You

Automate Mundane
Tasks
 Task Automation with Metadata
Get rid off all tedious and repetitive tasks

Metadata is not only for search! You can also improve the management,
distribution, and usage of your content.

Everybody wants to do the creative and inspiring work, instead of updating

PowerPoint decks with the latest images, sending emails with the most recent
logo and/or replacing photos on your CMS over and over and over again...

Well, you can automate all this with metadata!

Your job of managing content doesn’t end with storing and organizing. Instead,
the sole purpose is to share and reuse this content. The sharing of files can be
triggered automatically via metadata, and the destination can be just about
anything: your CMS, PIM, PowerPoint, Word, InDesign or even an FTP site.

You can distribute content based on a rule pertaining to the metadata in one or
more assets. Syndication workflows can be fully automated based on metadata
driven by business rules. For example, a news agency has an agreement with a
travel bureau and they automatically deliver all content to which a specific
keyword has been added, e.g., Travel.

You can automatically enhance and manipulate the content. Such as applying a
filter based on a metadata rule that makes your photo ready for print.

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Just a handful of things you can automate:
• Enhance and edit the most important images automatically
• Move, copy, delete, and transfer files
• Create ingestion rules for new assets
• Automate delivery and sharing
Remember: Always automate only where it makes sense!

Use Case: Save time in the review

process of photos.

The Kennel Club regularly runs

photo contests, where thousands of
photos are being submitted daily.
Metadata that matches certain
preset criteria is immediately sent
for review – shortening the time it
takes to review and approve
submissions.

Photo credit: Discover Dogs 2016,

Yulia Titovets / The Kennel Club ©

‘The backend automatically sorts and organizes photos

“
per category so, for example, people entering photos of
‘dogs at play’, we can then look at all those entries.
Relevant metadata is going in at the background as
people are registering their details.’

Heidi Hudson, Digital Asset Manager at The Kennel Club

Read an interview with the Kennel Club

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The San Francisco Ballet automated workflows to significantly reduce the time of
a photo travelling from the stage to the press from days to hours. In the
meantime, they managed to be compliant with their policies of getting approval
for each and every photo.

‘It’s incredibly convenient to have all important metadata automatically displayed on

our FotoWare website, and any change made at a later time doesn’t require making a
new copy and republishing the whole site; it’s just done!’
Erik Almlie, Media Assets Administrator, The San Francisco Ballet

‘It means that processes that had

previously taken hours of people’s time,

“
running around and chasing people, can
now be done in a matter of minutes.’
Murray Bognovitz, Director of IT, The San Francisco
Ballet

Read the full story of San Francisco Ballet

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 CHAPTER FIVE

Metadata Increases The

Value Of Your Content
The Hidden Value of Metadata
Remember those three categories of data we defined back at the beginning, in
Chapter Two? Well, a great example of how metadata can actually increase the
value of your content relates to Rights.

Metadata gives your file even more value. It can help you correctly use photos,
manage licensing, and have an expiry of a file for branding purposes.

It pays to make sure that you have the rights to use images or videos in your
archive. Metadata enables you to know this with 100% certainty. US Copyright
law enables owners to charge for damages of up to $150,000 for each
infringement, so not keeping on top of your licenses and image rights can be
incredibly costly.

Metadata could end up saving you a fortune!

In 2012, BuzzFeed was sued by Florida-based photo

agency Mavrix Photo for over $1.3M after publishing
nine celebrity photos without permission.
https://petapixel.com/2012/10/17/buzzfeed-sued-for-1-3m-after-publishing-9-celebrity-photos-without-
permission/

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 CHAPTER SIX

Metadata Increases
the Lifecycle of Your
Media Content
 Re-using Your Content
Metadata helps you to get the most out of the content you
create

Metadata makes it possible to easily re-use images, logos and graphics.

Continuity should be an important consideration for every organization, and that
includes continuity for your content.

Whether you’re working on brochures, landing pages or a presentation, it's highly

likely that you will end up needing to re-use content in various places
throughout.

Take logos, for example. These are undoubtedly the graphics that are used most
in marketing communications. Your logo is your brand identity!

One of the great benefits of DAM is the ease with which you can re-use those
graphics. From your presentations to your website, DAM helps to ensure
consistency across your organization. Your assets will be easier to find, and to
reuse, with DAM.

Another benefit is that DAM makes your job easier going forward – when you're
next putting together that presentation or planning that campaign, the files are
there already. You don’t have to repeat work you've already done before, so no
more creating templates or content from scratch.

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 CHAPTER SEVEN

Make Content
Discoverable for Every
Use with A.I.
 The Impact of A.I.
Remember when world was stunned by this video of a robot dog,
created by Boston Dynamics, which could open a door for one of
its other robot canine friends?

It’s surely just a matter of time before the human race is overrun by our mighty
mechanical overlords, when the inevitable uprising takes place!

…but, before all that impending doom and gloom, artificial intelligence can
benefit all of us who are working with large amounts of content.

Here are 3 innovative ways that AI could transform the management of your
digital assets.

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 1. Object Recognition
The beauty of metadata for DAM users is the number of hours it saves when
searching your archive. It’s vitally important that you ascribe the correct
metadata to your files in order to search and find exactly what you want in an
instant. The ability to further automate the process of adding metadata,
especially via keywords relating to the content, can further increase the
efficiency of this process.

For example, Imagga have developed their award-winning deep learning

technology, which suggests intelligent keywords by automatically analyzing the
content of images. The main benefit here is that even more hours can be saved
for both those managing and searching the system, thanks to many more
keyword options available that would not be possible to manually input.

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 2. Speech Recognition
For those working with high quantities of audio and video assets, a system which
can automatically transcribe and create subtitles for your content can save
thousands of hours.

In 2017, Microsoft announced that they had successfully developed a speech-

recognition system which is so good, it can match the word error rate of
professional transcribers.

An additional benefit of speech recognition is the potential to save time when it

comes to locating specific moments within the content. Based on keywords from
the auto-generated subtitles, highlights from the content can be easily identified
and found, removing the need to trawl through the content.

Voice technology has experienced a heightened focus in recent years, with the
resurgence of podcasting and thanks to innovations including the likes of
Amazon Echo and Google Home, battling for the number one smart-home
personal assistant.

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 3. Geo-searching
Similarly to object recognition, it is possible for artificial intelligence systems to
recognize and identify landmarks from all over the world.

Again, this provides relief from the duties of those inputting metadata, freeing up
more time to work on other things, and providing far greater breadth of
knowledge, expanding on our limited capacity to know and recognize more
obscure landmarks.

It also means that those searching the system can find relevant content quickly
and easily by using the names of these landmarks.

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 CHAPTER EIGHT

Metadata
and
Innovation
 Metadata inspires Innovation
Provoking discussion and aspiring to innovation

The National museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Norway built a 3D digital
sculpture of their files by leveraging the metadata stored in those files. The
model was made up of tiles which represent the individual artists and was
structured by the amount of an artist's work held at the museum.

The figure allows you to observe the amount of art created by an artist over
certain periods of time and also the gender of each artist. This goes to show the
power of data and how it can help bring awareness of issues - in this case, how
underrepresented females artists are - prompting valuable discussions and acting
as a catalyst to address such imbalances.

Metadata can help you

uncover information but also
present information in
different forms. The National
museum presented their
digital collection as a cloud
of art pieces grouped by
similarity based on machine
learning.

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An overview of the entire collection. Artworks have been grouped by similarity. It
works just like a map so you can zoom in to look at single works.
The project received support from The Arts Council Norway and is a collaboration
between the Section for Digital Collection Management at the National
Museum, Audun Mathias Øygard and Bengler.
http://vy.nasjonalmuseet.no/

‘I think we have just under 100,000 high quality

“
object pictures like artworks, events, and openings
and so on. We take 50-100 pictures of every event
and we have events every week!’

Vidar Ibenfeldt, Photo Archivist, Nasjonalmuseet

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