Promoting something with video advertising is about getting two things right: the video ad has to be on point, and that video needs to find the right audience.
As it turns out, delivery is a tough nut to crack for many businesses or advertising agencies.
But I am here to tell you that serving the right video ads to the right people can be as easy and seamless as regular targeted advertising.
The old ways of video ad insertion
Let’s take a step back and remember how video advertising was done previously.
With TV, the process was and still remains clunky: you get a deal with the television network and provide the ad. And that’s it.
People from the TV side of things put the footage in the agreed ad slots, and advertisers have no real way to clearly assess the impact of a particular ad.
They can only hope a lot of people see it, and that they like what they see.
TV networks also have their share of issues with this. They have to manually insert the ads into dedicated slots, and it becomes an even bigger headache during live broadcast: you have a team of producers and cameramen juggling the footage and whatnot, and keeping in mind the advertisements along all of that.
As we can see, the process has a lot of room for improvement.
Automated video ad insertion optimizes video advertising
One of the most efficient ways to improve the video advertising workflow is automation. Backed by data, an automated video ad insertion software addresses two major problems of video advertising:
- The lack of a seamless ad insertion process;
- The clunky or even non-existent video ad targeting.
But what is video ad insertion, anyway?
Video ad insertion is often referred to as the way to automatically insert video advertisements into the video content. Think of the ad breaks on TV — the content you watch stops, the ad plays, then the content resumes again.
Now, let’s talk about the benefits of automated video ad insertion and how those help it solve advertising issues.
Seamless ad insertion process
Well, that is the whole point of AI automation. Using video ad insertion software, content creators or producers won’t have to do it themselves anymore. They can focus on producing and broadcasting their content and not worry about ads at all.
Context understanding
Powered by Cognitive Computing tech, video ad insertion software doesn’t just put ads in video content at random. It carefully analyzes the video content to recognize its theme and story flow to choose the best spot for the video ad.
This way, the cliffhangers will be the most cliff-hanger, and there will be no awkward cutaways to the advertisement blocks.
Improved targeting
Video ad insertion software comes packed with intelligent video analysis algorithms which enable it to understand the content on a whole new level.
Now, it can actually identify the context of analyzed videos, and that helps it choose the ads that would be beneficial for the content’s target audience.
For example, if it analyzes the basketball game, it can serve video ads about basketball gear, betting services, or sports clothes.
A powerful tool ensures that your ads will get to the potential customers, and they won’t be as annoyed as usual.
Cognitive Computing makes sure the consistency is on point
Of course, there are concerns that might arise in terms of leaving the process important for both media people and advertisers in the hands of Artificial Intelligence.
Some may think that it can’t perform as well as it does, because AI is notoriously bad at being something more than a pattern recognition tool, right?
And that is the point.
If you were to go about automating video content analysis with the power of AI alone, you would have to resort to workarounds in order to get the software to work. For example, AI could figure out the theme of the content by relying on speech recognition to fish for certain keywords set up by a human.
In theory, that could work. But as soon as the software runs into a video with no words, or with subpar sound quality — no dice.
So, in order to have the video ad insertion software work with a wider variety of content and put out consistent results, it needs help from a human.
But not the training — it needs to learn how to think like a human.
Which is where Cognitive Computing steps in. It provides a suite of technologies that enable the video ad insertion tool to work with any type of footage, imitating the ways humans process the information.
The process comes down to stages simulating two different factors of the cognitive process: the “eyes” and the “brain”.
Here’s the breakdown:
- Perception — the “eyes” factor. The software uses digital image processing, cognitive computer vision, and deep learning to analyze the visuals and identify points of interest;
- Decision — the “brain” factor. The video ad insertion tool studies the data from the perception stage, applying probabilistic AI, cognitive science, and math modeling to identify the context of the video, its narrative structure, and find the perfect spot for the advertisement.
That technology cocktail results in relevant ads that appear at the right time in the footage. And the speed allows media companies to have the ads inserted even during live broadcasts.
Bottom line
With streaming doing better every year, it is essential for those hosting and providing advertisements to ensure the most convenient and seamless experience.
On the one hand, a streamlined process improves workflow efficiency. On the other, better-targeting yields better returns for advertisers.
And at the end of the day, the viewers benefit as well — better video ad insertion delivers the right ads at the right time, making them less annoying.
All that is made possible by powerful automation software. Using top-notch Cognitive Computing algorithms, video ad insertion software can analyze the footage, learn about its context and structure, and identify which ads to put at what moment.
