Microsoft adCenter Labs unveiled some new technologies this week during their annual demo of future technologies.
I’ve been eagerly following the developments of ‘Surface’, the interactive …well…surface computer. However, Surface is a while away from being part of my daily life, and it’s far too early to even discuss the marketing implications, so I digress…
More practical announcements cover a few areas I’ve been waiting for – contextual video targeting, the video hyperlink, and social video.
Let’s just focus on contextual video targeting for now. I’ve been preaching this one for the last year or so, ever since my clients have been increasing the allocation to video advertising. Let’s face it – we developed a text based internet. All of our systems and tools do a great job of parsing text and building models for targeting and/or dynamic content creation. However, video has not enjoyed the same flexibility and matchability at as granular a level as text-based content due to technical restrictions that prevent us from easily understanding the context of the content. Audio-to-text technology, in theory, should solve all of that. In reality – have you seen any systems that work perfectly yet? Just think about the telephone based speech-to-text / speech recognition systems, some are good and some stink, so I guess it’s all in the specific technology used. Hey Microsoft is a technology company – think they can nail this one? Probably, as will many others. There’s a bright future for video advertising that will benefit advertisers, publishers and consumers alike – it’s the trifecta of satisfaction, if you will.
Others have been experimenting with these types of technologies (Sanscout, & Blinx for example), but none have seem to really become the primary “These guys nailed it” destination for contextual video targeting technology yet. With video inventory of YouTube proportions and a pool of 350,000+ advertisers, surely Google is experimenting with these technologies as well. Targeting videos contextually will fuel the growth of the online video advertising. Just think of the search engines and contextual networks adding an extra option to your campaign “Include contextual video placements?” – instant scalability. The valuable usage data can will be combined with existing systems and algorithms for use beyond contextual targeting, to include behavioral targeting as well.
Advertisers love video for its emotive qualities, digital marketers love identifiably and data for their scientific virtues – combine the two and we have a winner folks!
Hence, the future of video is text…
