Ten years ago, when a growing group of data experts began to swell the ranks of of the EBU’s former Metadata Developer Network, their topic was still niche, and implementation an uphill battle. Now, ten years later, with the emergence of AI technologies, most media organizations have made it a strategic priority to innovate around their data.
The annual Data Technology Seminar 2025 proved that point. The programme gave participants a comprehensive overview of the current thinking, experiments, real implementations, and lessons learned in data and AI, directly from the coal-face of innovation across the European media landscape. Held on 11-13 March at EBU HQ in Geneva, DTS attracted a full house of data and AI professionals, researchers, and innovators.
Accuracy, user interaction and value-added services are key innovation drivers
The DTS programme is built from peer-reviewed presentation proposals gathered from across the EBU membership. This year, Data and AI strategy, LLMs in media, and personalization and recommendations emerged as some of the natural centres of gravity of the programme.
A notable trend visible across the 3 days of the event was the willingness of media organizations to innovate bespoke AI solutions in-house, looking for added value across the entire chain.
3 areas stood out in particular, each aiming to address a particular set of challenges: The first group is projects designed to “own” the user interaction by evolving experiences and creating more value for audiences from existing assets. A second key group of projects is about internal tools that remove workflow bottle-necks, help exploit underutilized resources, or give the organization better insights with analytics. And a third set of projects explores how to automate without the side effects, for example by figuring out ways to ensure editorial values are maintained.
DTS 2026
The Data Technology Seminar 2026 will again be in March, and dates will be announced in the coming weeks while the programme board takes a break. The call for submissions for the 2026 event will be launched after the summer break – watch this space!
EBU members can explore the DTS 2025 content in the EBU tech-i app, or the EBU Tech Talks library.