Digitalsmiths/Durham, NC, a Web development and hosting firm founded in 1998, has launched VideoSense, a contextual video ad matching technology that will analyze video content to help advertisers run targeted ads.
VideoSense is based on a video indexing platform Digitalsmiths developed to index TV shows and feature films that utilizes image recognition and speech-to-text technology. “We index everything you can think of that happened within the content of a show,” said Ben Weinberger, Digitalsmiths co-founder/CEO.
Now Digitalsmiths will be able analyze the audio and visual elements of videos and the information can be used to serve ads. “With VideoSense, we take data from the video and feed it to the ad network and they can make a decision about which ad is most appropriate for the video and they serve an ad.”
The data may be supplied to an ad network, but it will be generated by a content owner, who is Digitalsmiths’ customer because the technology enables content owners to generate more ad revenue.
VideoSense will provide text data for video content, similar to the information that has been available about traditional Web content through Google’s AdSense.
As an example of how VideoSense works, Weinberger said a video about how to prepare a Thanksgiving meal might include an ad for Perdue turkeys. It could also include an ad for Kmart for home decoration products. “The ads will change as the video plays based on the content in the video,” he said.
Digitalsmith has just generated $6 million in financing to support VideoSense and launched a beta program in which major content owners, TV and film studios are participating in, according to Weinberger. The beta program will run up to six months for each participant, “depending on how much content we want to push,” he said.
Companies can contact Digitalsmiths to sign up for the beta program.
Supreme Court Allows Multibillion-Dollar Class Action Lawsuit To Proceed Against Meta
The Supreme Court is allowing a multibillion-dollar class action investors' lawsuit to proceed against Facebook parent Meta, stemming from the privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm.
The justices heard arguments in November in Meta's bid to shut down the lawsuit. On Friday, they decided that they were wrong to take up the case in the first place.
The high court dismissed the company's appeal, leaving in place an appellate ruling allowing the case to go forward.
Investors allege that Meta did not fully disclose the risks that Facebook users' personal information would be misused by Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump 's first successful Republican presidential campaign in 2016.
Inadequacy of the disclosures led to two significant price drops in the price of the company's shares in 2018, after the public learned about the extent of the privacy scandal, the investors say.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the company was disappointed by the court's action. "The plaintiff's claims are baseless and we will continue to defend ourselves as this case is considered by the District Court," Stone said in an emailed statement.
Meta already has paid a $5.1 billion fine and reached a $725 million privacy settlement with users.
Cambridge Analytica had ties to Trump political strategist Steve Bannon. It had paid a Facebook app developer for access to the personal information of about 87 million Facebook users. That data was then used to target U.S. voters during the 2016 campaign.
The lawsuit is one of two high court cases involving class-action lawsuits against tech companies. The justices also are wrestling with whether to shut down a class action against Nvidia.... Read More