On Wednesday, October 8, Rob Dillon, Principal Strategist, Dillon Media Ventures, will moderate the Streaming Media 2025 panel “AI-Powered Curation and Discoverability.” In today’s saturated content market, even on the downward slope of the peak TV era, offering great content isn’t enough to deliver satisfying experiences to streaming users. Platforms and channels need to read the tea leaves of user data and surface the shows viewers most want to see next. This panel will explore how machine learning and personalization facilitate more effective curation and discovery and increasingly shape the viewer experience.
Confirmed panelists include:
- Max Rausch, Director, Value Creation & Business Optimization, Roku
- Tony Huidor, President, Technology & Chief Product Officer, Cineverse
- Sharon Kritzer, VP of Product for Discovery & AI, Tubi
- Rebecca Avery, Owner & Principal, Integration Therapy and Chair, SVTA Metadata Working Group
Register for Streaming Media 2025 by September 5 and save up to $100 with Early-Bird Pricing!
Rob Dillon is principal strategist at his consultancy Dillon Media Ventures. He is an expert streaming media strategist and thought leader who brings a multitude of skills to the table from the initial formation of the concept, to its technical implementation, to the deployment and training. Dillon has spent more than 15 years working in local newsrooms and as a consultant to radio and television stations with a defined focus on live streaming and OTT to better connect with their target audiences using new and innovative methods.
“Traditionally, broadcasters had to serve everybody,” Dillon said at Streaming Media Connect 2023 of the change from linear to streaming. “They had to be all things to everyone. Whereas a lot of the successful FAST channels are ‘niching’ down.”
Max Rausch is the director of value creation and business operations at Roku. At Roku, he has built a comprehensive platform monetization program, led partner integrations and ongoing business optimizations for verticals such as Sports, and served as business lead for optimizing Roku’s content recommendations algorithm for monetization. Rausch is also a founding partner of Courtyard Ventures, which supports startups from the University of California–Berkeley ecosystem.
Tony Huidor is president, technology, and chief product officer at Cineverse, where he is responsible for establishing the overall technology road map and managing the day-to-day streaming business operations as well as overseeing all software development efforts pertaining to Cineverse’s Matchpoint video distribution platform. In addition, he is responsible for overseeing the product strategy for all consumer-facing video streaming products within the Cineverse portfolio, including SVOD, AVOD, and FAST channels, as well as managing product development, digital content distribution, ad technology, and data analytics.
Huidor shares that his focus on this panel “will be to discuss how best to leverage AI to solve the industrywide problem with search and discovery. I will advocate that we as an industry need to move past traditional, descriptive metadata and more aggressively utilize AI-generated enriched metadata. We cannot solve the modern problem of poor search and discovery by relying on a metadata standard developed over 75 years ago. We have to take a new approach in order to effectively solve this problem.”
Sharon Kritzer is the VP of product for discovery and AI at Tubi, where she leads the teams responsible for helping audiences discover and engage with content. Her work leverages cutting-edge AI to personalize and optimize content curation, presentation, and merchandising at scale. Kritzer’s multidisciplinary background—spanning mechanical engineering, AI, and user-centered design—gives her a unique perspective on building intuitive, impactful experiences.
Kritzer advocates for the use of AI to streamline her work. “AI gives us the unique ability to analyze content deeply, recognizing themes and storylines that extend far beyond traditional genre classifications,” she says. “At Tubi, we offer more than 300,000 movies and TV episodes, inclusive of recent blockbusters, indie thrillers, and now, episodic digital creator content. Our AI-enhanced metadata more effectively connects related themes across different content formats. So, if you’ve just finished a haunted house film, our platform might recommend a haunted house episode from Watcher, the digital media company and YouTube channel that can now be found on Tubi.”
Rebecca Avery is a strategic advisor and media operations expert. As the owner and principal at Integration Therapy, she helps media companies untangle complex supply chains and build smarter systems through metadata-driven approaches that prioritize usability and inclusion. A former metadata architect behind streaming standards still in use today, Avery brings both technical fluency and human-centered insight to every table she joins. She currently chairs the Metadata Working Group for the Streaming Video Technology Alliance and has advised on AI, accessibility, and operational resilience across the media landscape.
On this panel, Avery will focus on the importance of metadata. “Metadata is a strategic asset, not just a technical detail,” she asserts. “Connecting it to corporate strategy enables true personalization, smarter discovery, and resilient monetization. But achieving business outcomes requires more than technology: It demands strategic alignment, cross-team cohesion, and operational efficiency. Neglecting these elements is a primary reason 80% of IT projects fail to meet their goals.”
Register now for Streaming Media 2025!
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