Ranker, an L.A.-based digital media firm boasting 40 million monthly visitors, on Monday morning released Watchworthy, a service that uses machine learning to give users bespoke what-to-watch recommendations. Watchworthy will initially be available only on the iOS app store, but Chief Executive Clark Benson told dot.LA that the company plans to roll it out to Android and connected devices like Roku and Apple TV later this year.

The average video streaming user spends over seven minutes deciding what to watch, per a 2019 study from Nielsen. With Comcast, AT&T, Quibi and Discovery all planning to launch streaming services to compete with the likes of Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Disney, and Apple, making a choice is poised to only get harder.

Enter Watchworthy, which — in contrast to the platforms' own recommendation engines — will provide suggestions across over 200 streaming services.

People are streaming shows and movies more as the coronavirus fallout has decimated leisure alternatives and flushed people's lives with free time. According to a Bloomberg story, Wurl Inc. estimated that globally time spent streaming last weekend rose by an average of 20%. That seems likely to grow, based on a separate analysis from Nielsen finding that viewing spiked by over 60% during certain past shut-ins.

This could prove fortuitous for Watchworthy, which has been under development for a year or so, according to Benson, and coincidentally launches as demand for its service may be rising.

How does it work?

"It starts on Ranker.com," explains Chantelle Silveira, Ranker's Chief Product Officer, who helped manage the development of Watchworthy.

"Watchworthy creates a digital taste fingerprint based on your unique combination of likes and dislikes," explains Silveira. The model then compares that fingerprint to millions of others in the Ranker database, and finds a similar user group. "Then it looks at what those people are watching, and not watching, to come up with your personalized list of recommendations."

Data and the Entertainment Business: What Watchworthy Shows

One of Netflix's early competitive advantages was its digital proximity to customers. Whereas legacy companies like Disney formerly needed to rely on third parties for much of their customer data–which was usually coarse and of limited usefulness–Netflix early on had direct access to highly granular, extremely useful data about its customers. Among other outcomes, this enabled their lauded recommendation engine, which got better the more customers used it and so helped Netflix retain subscribers.

The power of customer data goes a long way in explaining the rise of Disney+ and other direct-to-consumer (D2C) platforms. Information about user behavior and preferences will help those companies make decisions.

The story of Ranker and its release of Watchworthy shows how the broader entertainment industry's data evolution is far from complete.

"I didn't know there would be a data business in this when I first started," reflects Benson. But now, entirely new businesses have sprung from the information collected from Ranker visitors.

Earlier this year Benson hired David Yon to lead Ranker Insights, a new business unit aiming to use Ranker data to provide insight to entertainment businesses.

Watchworthy will be free for users, but will generate advertising revenue and referral fees from streaming platforms, Benson said.

Though there is already plenty to watch, such industrial ripples will continue to provide yet more content to keep an eye on.

Follow Sam Blake on Twitter and email him at samblake@dot.la