Management

YouTube Financial Reports Will Include EIDR IDs for Google Play Transactions; Disney, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros. Among Participants (SCN)

Google has announced that YouTube Transactional reports have been improved to include the Entertainment Identifier Registry (EIDR) ID when that number is provided in an Avail. This marks the long-anticipated completion of the EIDR “round trip,” where the EIDR ID is used in the initial publishing of the Avail for a piece of Film/TV content all the way through to financial reporting on the performance of the content. Transactional reports will include both the EIDR Title ID and the EIDR Edit ID if provided to that level of granularity by the content supplier.

“We realized early on that supporting a common, robust identifier throughout our supply chains, in concert with the industry standard EMA Avails specification, would yield huge dollar savings from efficiency. Further, such improved automation would improve time-to-market for our content partners’ entertainment assets,” said Bill Kotzman, Partner/Product Manager at YouTube/Google, and EIDR Board Member. “And now, EIDR is an integral part of automating the financial reporting for us and our content partners.”

This announcement is a major milestone in a concerted effort between Google Play and content suppliers including major Hollywood studios, themselves charter members of EIDR.

“The EIDR round-trip delivers long-awaited efficiencies in the Digital Supply Chain, resulting in game-changing systemic improvements and enhanced financial reporting and invoicing capabilities industry-wide,” said Kelly Fong-Bouchey, Director, Client Relations & Operations, Warner Bros. Technology. “The Warner Bros. Technology team is excited that Google, a key digital distribution partner, has embraced and integrated the EIDR round-trip into its workflows.”

“Sony Pictures Entertainment has adopted EIDR throughout its data systems, and more recently, as the key to transactional digital supply chain automation,” said Ellen Goodridge, SVP Digital Supply Chain and Product Development, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. “The completion of the EIDR round-trip with Google Play represents an opportunity to enable more standards-based automation that will increase efficiency for the premium digital business.”

“Disney is pleased to see the progress EIDR has made in its ability to drive efficiencies through automated, standards-based workflows across our integrated digital supply chain,” said Christopher Stefanidis, Vice-President, Digital Distribution Operations and Strategy, Walt Disney Pictures and Television. “Achieving this initial round-trip milestone is a significant step and we look forward to establishing many other targeted uses for EIDR with our industry partners.”