ARD Mediathek increases user numbers to more than two billion

by time news

The ARD Mediathek has significantly increased its user numbers in the past year. It recorded more than two billion video views in 2021, as the responsible Südwestrundfunk (SWR) announced on Friday in Stuttgart.

That corresponds to an increase of 62 percent compared to 2020. The public broadcaster spoke of a record reach, as did the ARD Audiothek, which had 67 million views (plus 24 percent). SWR director Kai Gniffke told the German Press Agency about the ARD media library: “We worked in several areas: the technology, personalization and content have improved.” And the development of own content for the media center has been promoted. “We don’t just put what we once broadcast in the media library. We produce exclusively for the media library.” That accounts for a large part of the usage.

The pandemic also favored use, but in the second year of the corona crisis that was no longer such a decisive factor as it was in 2020.

When asked about a target, Gniffke said: “We want to become the number 1 streaming provider in Germany in the long term – with the ARD and ZDF streaming network.” If you pack the best of both technological worlds from the search function to the recommendation logic and usage data, then that will give a “significant boost”. “Hopefully, usage will continue to rise steeply,” added the director. ARD and ZDF have been working more closely with their media libraries for some time, but they each remain independent.

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