Contextual ad targeting, which started with Google’s AdSense for text-based advertising, is now being developed for video ads, with technology available that analyzes various components of video content to enable the placement of relevant ads. Ben Weinberger co-founded Digitalsmiths/Durham, NC in 1998 and the company began by analyzing film and television content. The technology paved the way for VideoSense, the company’s new product that creates contextual advertising opportunities for broadband video. Weinberger, Digitalsmiths’ CEO, discusses the company’s technology, how it works with ad networks and publishers, and how it will improve video advertising and promote revenue increases.
iSPOT: Blinkx, Nexidia, ScanScout and Pixsy have introduced contextual video ad systems and it’s been written that there is a crowding field of vendors. How does yours differ from the others?
Weinberger: There’s probably two main things, one’s on the technology side and one’s on the business side. On the tech side we’re the only group right now that has the ability to not just look at the spoken word. A lot of people just look at the speech of the video and they say that’s how they can identify the context. But you’re missing a lot of information, the proverbial picture’s worth a thousand words. We have an entire suite of visual recognition capability where we can do object detection, object classification …
iSPOT: What do you mean by that?
Weinberger: We can pull out objects in the video and tell you if there’s things like cars or buildings, or if you’re in a seaside, mountain, city or office building and we can get specific and tell you the scene has a Jaguar or Coke can and it takes place in New York City. All of this takes place automatically through visual algorithms we’ve developed, it’s all proprietary technology. To our knowledge we’re the only group that has combined the capability of visual recognition with speech recognition and the ability to interpret all that. If you’re watching a video, it’s not simply enough to say the word car or suitcase within a scene, whether it’s recognized visually or through the audio stream. You need to be able to say this scene is about someone taking a trip so its a travel opportunity for advertisers, as opposed to if it’s a dateline story about a serial killer who cuts up his victims and puts them in a suitcase. The words can be very misleading, you need to understand the context of the words.
iSPOT: You started beta tests and you’re willing to share some information about them now.
Weinberger: There’s a couple of tests going on now. One really unique one is we’re working with a media company and they’re looking at how they can use contextual advertising and video search to help with their traditional media. They’re implementing and testing the technology to help them find advertising opportunities in cable and broadband, they’re using cross platform implementation of our technology. We can’t tell you the name of that group because of our agreement with them. We’re talking about partnerships, whether it’s a group like Tremor Media or VideoEgg we can implement a solution or help them improve the targeting capability of their advertising.
iSPOT: Will advertisers be able to buy your service directly, or will they use it through an ad network like Tremor?
Weinberger: Right now if we’re working with a group like Tremor or VideoEgg, advertisers who are working with them would continue to buy through them and we would seamlessly integrate with them so they can better target their advertising with the videos they play next to. This gets back to the competitive question. A lot of people play video ads but none have the ability to contextually target. We can integrate with their systems. We’re not trying to compete with them for ad dollars, we’re facilitating them to help them make better ad decisions.
iSPOT: In that situation you’re providing a service for the ad network as opposed to the advertiser.
Weinberger: It’s for the ad network and the advertiser comes to them because they know they can better target ads.
iSPOT: Once an ad network uses your product, how does it work?
Weinberger: A publisher using an ad network would say I want to work with a network that can contextually target ads to video. We give them a plug-in for their site. The publisher or the network can use it. Ultimately it interfaces with the ad network so when a video plays at their site we interpret that data and give that data to ad networks and they look into their ad inventory and see which ad is most appropriate to serve and then come back and serve that ad. It’s a seamless integration, they don’t have to change anything, we give them the plug-in that enables them to get information about the videos they previously were unable to get.
iSPOT: Once they determine an ad to play, can they play all kinds of ad formats?
Weinberger: Exactly, we’re agnostic as far as format, pre-roll, in-stream, in banner and overlays, we support them all. We’re the only future proof solution. Competitors give you ads that are videos or overlays–we’re saying that’s short sighted. We provide all ad opportunities.
iSPOT: How do you think the addition of contextual video advertising will transform the video ad medium?
Weinberger: We’re going to see a similar pattern to what contextual text based advertising has done. Early on it takes awhile to adopt, people don’t understand it or have the right models for buying the advertising. They need to find pricing models. Over time it will transform video advertising to the point where advertisers are creating ads specially for categories and targeting them and they’ll know it can be achieved when integrated with the VideoSense system, just like Google AdSense. Now it’s a scatter shot ad approach, the ads are broad and more demographically targeted. Over time those ads will be more refined and create more of an intimate situation with the user so they appreciate them and aren’t annoyed by the ads.
iSPOT: Do you think the amount of ad revenue will increase with this service?
Weinberger: In one word, yes.
iSPOT: Who’s going to make more money, the ad network or the publisher or both?
Weinberger: We’ll be able to demonstrate a lift in CPM and CPC rates. You’re not only getting a more targeted ad but a more successful ad. It’s going to end up being more of a premium ad buy, like Google AdSense is today.
iSPOT: What’s the status with your beta tests?
Weinberger: We anticipate groups coming out of beta in the next few months and going live with their solutions. The product works now, we’ve been indexing content for six years and we know how to interpret content. It’s a matter of people implementing it and tweaking and massaging it to meet their needs. We’re not building a product alongside somebody, it’s really a scenario where they’re giving us feedback and we’re making it the best possible user experience.
iSPOT: Are the companies doing beta tests with publishers or ad networks or both?
Weinberger: It’s actually both. Some networks we’re integrating with and publishers are putting their content online and we’re also working with a group of middleware companies that enable video search, they’re enabling search on other sites and using it to increase the targeting of the search which leads to better targeting of video once someone finds the content they want.
