Yahoo! is extending two TV commercials from the “Be a Better __” campaign it launched April 30 with online video ads that allow viewers to take the spots further with alternative endings they can select online and plug into the spots.
Visitors at http://better.yahoo.com can go to “Be A Better Editor” and “Be A Better Director” to choose new endings to the TV spots. They can drag and drop alternative clips to change the commercials.
“It’s like turning the TV spots into a choose-your-own-adventure,” said Mark Svartz, a copywriter at Soho Square, a WPP Group agency. The TV :30s features situations with two separate endings, so viewers can see what happens with or without Yahoo. There are a variety of alternative endings online, so viewers can take the idea of different endings further.
“After a three-day shoot we had another day to work with the director, Matt Aselton (with bicoastal Epoch Films), so we came up with a few various endings for use in the online experience,” Ogilvy art director Josh Rosen said. “The interactive team was also there on the fourth day to create some filmic banners to go along with the TV spots.”
One of the banners works like the online video ads with a sidebar showing a man looking at a wall full of crooked pictures with the banner offering two possible resolutions to his dilemma. Click on one and see the wall explode (without Yahoo) and click on the other to see the man use a laser device to straighten all the pictures quickly (with Yahoo).
“Innovative interactive ads online play off the TV creative to further integrate and extend the campaign on and off the Yahoo network,” said Nick Chavez, Yahoo‘s senior director of brand advertising. He said the online elements represent 60 percent of a campaign that also includes TV, print, radio and cinema ads. The campaign promotes Yahoo! Answers, a feature that can answer any question and Yahoo! oneSearch, a mobile search product.
The campaign demonstrates how online video can be created from a TV shoot and used to extend a TV campaign. “We took two TV commercials and all the alternative endings and made all the footage available online,” Chavez said. “Users can watch the ad and choose the footage to insert in the ad and play the revised combination.” It could make the ad better, which is the theme of the campaign.
AI-Assisted Works Can Get Copyright With Enough Human Creativity, According To U.S. Copyright Office
Artists can copyright works they made with the help of artificial intelligence, according to a new report by the U.S. Copyright Office that could further clear the way for the use of AI tools in Hollywood, the music industry and other creative fields.
The nation's copyright office, which sits in the Library of Congress and is not part of the executive branch, receives about half a million copyright applications per year covering millions of individual works. It has increasingly been asked to register works that are AI-generated.
And while many of those decisions are made on a case-by-case basis, the report issued Wednesday clarifies the office's approach as one based on what the top U.S. copyright official describes as the "centrality of human creativity" in authoring a work that warrants copyright protections.
"Where that creativity is expressed through the use of AI systems, it continues to enjoy protection," said a statement from Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter, who directs the office.
An AI-assisted work could be copyrightable if an artist's handiwork is perceptible. A human adapting an AI-generated output with "creative arrangements or modifications" could also make it fall under copyright protections.
The report follows a review that began in 2023 and fielded opinions from thousands of people that ranged from AI developers, to actors and country singers.
It shows the copyright office will continue to reject copyright claims for fully machine-generated content. A person simply prompting a chatbot or AI image generator to produce a work doesn't give that person the ability to copyright that work, according to the report. "Extending protection to material whose expressive elements are determined by a machine ...... Read More