Google has announced that YouTube Transactional reports will support the Entertainment Identifier Registry (EIDR) ID when it is provided in an Avail.

The EIDR is a universal identification system for tracking the progress and performance of movie and television assets.

Disney, Sony Pictures and Warner Bros. are all supporting the move that marks the completion of the EIDR “round trip” from publishing to transaction report.

Bill Kotzman, a partner and product manager at YouTube/Google, and EIDR Board Member, said: “We realised 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. And now, EIDR is an integral part of automating the financial reporting for us and our content partners.”

Sony Pictures Entertainment has adopted EIDR throughout its data systems, and more recently, as the key to transactional digital supply chain automation.

Ellen Goodridge, senior vice president of Sony Pictures’ Digital Supply Chain and Product Development, added: “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.”

ITV is using EIDR to speed up content delivery and to obtain music cue sheets on international content it acquires. See this month’s edition of Broadcast TECH for more.