Digitalsmiths Molds Seamless Video Ad Platform
- by June 4, 2007
A first round of venture capital funding is currently underway to support the launch of VideoSense, a new contextual ad system that Digitalsmiths' co-founder and CEO Ben Weinberger said will seamlessly and automatically match online ads to Web videos as they are being viewed. Closed beta tests are currently being run with content owners, he added, and he's been talking with various ad networks.
Weinberger said that VideoSense offers seamless integration between the ad networks and content providers. "Most other people in this business are forcing people to choose another ad network or to change the way they show video," he explained. With VideoSense, however, "Nothing has to be changed. We sit between any content owner platform and any ad network, and the ad network delivers ads against that content contextually."
Digitalsmiths' six-year-old InScene service has been used by such TV series as "Seinfeld," "Sex and the City" and "Friends" to pinpoint and access specific people, places, objects and dialogue. With VideoSense, Weinberger explained: "We take all the info we've indexed and feed it to the ad network."
The ads can be banners, video or on-screen text. In a demo shown to OnlineMediaDaily, a player showed a scene from NBC's "The Office" as banner ads on the right and below changed based on the characters' conversation, what someone was wearing, and so on.
Weinberger explained that the technology changes the ads based on three factors: audio recognition, video recognition, and behavioral data derived both from previously researched viewer demos of specific programs and from users' online actions.
Weinberger said he hopes to announce VideoSense's first publisher deals in the next few weeks. On June 14th, he'll be appearing on a PROMAX panel in New York on the "Future of Online Advertising," which will also include Fred McIntyre, senior vice president of AOL Video, and Ari Paparo, vice president of rich media at DoubleClick.
