DigitalSmiths Claims to Be the Google of Video Ads

Originally published July 9 2007DigitalSmiths says the VideoSense ad matching technology it introduced this year can recognize pieces of video and audio and then tell an ad server to place contextually relevant ads in around or even over the videoIn presentations and exclusive interviews with Jack Myers Media Business Report DigitalSmiths CEO Ben Weinberger explained the technology and what it can do One of his presentations calls VideoSense quotthe first platform agnostic broadband video contextual advertising solution to integrate seamlessly with existing online ad networksquotIn plainer English that means the technology recognizes a lot of what39s in a video amp8212 objects clothing furniture a soda can a cell phone etc scenes and locales Paris New York Los Angeles a beach a ski slope and even famous faces amp8212 as well as speech which it converts to text for recognition then plugs that information into its algorithm accesses a database and tells an ad server from say DoubleClick Zedo or Atlas to put in an ad that matches the contentWeinberger showed one example in which the Thrivent financial company worked with Habitat for Humanity to build homes When the video showed a Milwaukee Brewers stadium logo an ad for their ballpark appeared in an ad unit next to the video window The software recognized builders working with houses and movers carrying boxes and showed ads for Home Depot and a moving company respectivelyFor a demo episode of The Office the DigitalSmiths presentation showed ads for Men39s Wearhouse next to a character in a nicely cut suit for JCrew when that company was mentioned and for Fossil when someone mentioned wristwatchesRecognizing Tom Cruise at the BeachThe presentations were not true demos But if the technology works as promised it could herald a revolution in the way ads are served for video Imagine if in addition to choosing a channel based on its demographic makeup young women older adults children amp8230 or general content strain cooking lifestyle etc marketers could place ads relevant to individual content parsed at multiple levelsWhat if you could for example tell an ad network to recognize every image of Tom Cruise at an airport but not in the mountains or to show women39s skiwear ads whenever there were women walking in a snowy village but not in the middle of a city or by a poolWeinberger says his technology can do all that and that it is also smart enough to not place ads with unfortunate meanings He tells of one occurrence when a text ad for Samsonite luggage appeared alongside a story about a serial killer who had placed bodies in suitcases The VideoSense contextual recognition is deep broad and multilayered and unlikely to make such mistakes Weinberger saysYet his presentation showed contextual advertising in a rather literal and blunt sense The Office episode for example was about some characters39 inability to balance books due to possible pilfering and so an ad for Deloitte Touche appeared The JCrew ad came up when someone said illicit purchases may have been made from that chain Not only were the ads a bit distracting but the companies39 ad buyers might prefer their messages not appear in those contextsWeinberger insists though that the technology will give the ad industry what it ultimately wantsquotThere39s no doubt in advertisers39 minds that contextual advertising is always better than noncontextualquot Weinberger says quotI saw a story yesterday about animal abuse and the ad was for weight loss It would have been better targeted to something relevant to animalsquotVideoSense will certainly be refined over time Weinberger says DigitalSmiths39 software experts some of them PhDs in video pattern recognition have built the components of VideoSense from the ground up so the company will have control and be able to continually improve the product Even the facial recognition software is derived from academic research and algorithms rather than any existing productquotWe39ve never taken someone else39s technology and tried to bend or meld it into a video enginequot Weinberger saysAnother key aspect of the technology is its ability to tell ad servers not only what content is playing but also which kind of ads to serve VideoSense can call for standard units such as banners or rectangles for ads within a video stream and even a relatively new ad unit that forms a transparent layer atop the lower third of a Web videoWeinberger points out that the technology could also be used to provide interactive polls related Webisodes or other items that can be inserted and are relevant to contentTests With a TV StudioThe technology is currently being tested by a TV studio Web portals and ad platform networks but Weinberger won39t say who because they don39t want to tip off competitors DigitalSmiths has strong inroads in Hollywood because of a previous technology that helped studios parse and organize archival footage so it could be resold for example in TV promosWeinberger plans to use the funding DigitalSmiths received late last month to about double its staff to 35 people over the next year or so That39s a long way from 1998 when Weinberger cofounded the company in a dorm room at Southern Illinois University Today the company it is based in the RaleighDurham Research Triangle areaDigitalSmiths CEO Ben Weinberger can be reached at phone number 8433797878 x215Dorian Benkoil is a regular columnist for Jack Myers Media Business Report

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DigitalSmiths Claims to Be the Google of Video Ads

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