NBCUniversal Taps Machine Learning To Tie Ads To Relevant Moments on TV (adweek.com) 60
The next time you see, say, a wedding scene on a USA Network show followed by a champagne commercial, it may not be a coincidence. From a report: NBCUniversal announced a new machine learning tool today that helps brands place ads around scenes relevant to their product across any of the media giant's broadcast and cable properties. The Contextual Intelligence Platform analyzes programming scripts, closed captioning data and visual descriptors of both ads and shows to find opportune moments for a given advertiser to appear as well as an emotional gauge for each scene determined by proprietary algorithms.
Focus groups for ads placed with the platform thus far have shown an average bump of 19 percent in brand memorability, 13 percent in likability and 64 percent in message memorability, according to Josh Feldman, vp and head of marketing and advertising creative, NBCU. The announcement comes as linear television providers continue to grapple with how to bring digital targeting practices to a medium that still largely operates on traditional phone-call media buying and manual ad placements. NBCU is now working with three to five advertisers for the system's beta-test, and is aiming for an official release date early next year.
Focus groups for ads placed with the platform thus far have shown an average bump of 19 percent in brand memorability, 13 percent in likability and 64 percent in message memorability, according to Josh Feldman, vp and head of marketing and advertising creative, NBCU. The announcement comes as linear television providers continue to grapple with how to bring digital targeting practices to a medium that still largely operates on traditional phone-call media buying and manual ad placements. NBCU is now working with three to five advertisers for the system's beta-test, and is aiming for an official release date early next year.
INB4... (Score:4, Insightful)
Inb4 first outrage caused when system misinterprets a rape scene as a sex scene and presents condom or lingerie ads...
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
American Nazi party ads during holocaust movie.
Re: (Score:2)
Nah. Oven cleaner all the way. Or that ad about not "passing gas" would be awesome.
And when they parade the near-death concentration camp skeletons, run commercials for slim fast.
Bad example (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
And a funeral with some ads for real estate agents.
Re: (Score:2)
And a funeral with some ads for real estate agents.
Life insurance seems like a better match. Then again, I'm not using Machine Learning(TM), so I could be wrong.
A show about Bitcoin (Score:4)
How about AI for content (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
You must be a foreign national trying to influence our society. Please go back to your masters and tell them you failed. </sarcasm>
Re: (Score:2)
How about you use that AI for making good content
Because that's not what "AI" does.
Re: (Score:2)
Why worry about the few minutes between the ads, concentrate on the bulk of the broadcast!
TiVo+30-second-skip = WIN (Score:4, Insightful)
But Rick, what will you do when they outlaw skipping or fast-forwarding through commercials?
(Assuming they can get away with that) Same thing I did before TiVo: mute them and ignore them.
It's almost 2019; do intelligent people actually sit and pay attention to commercials anymore (assuming they don't have a DVR)?
Re: (Score:1)
I get paid to be in commercials, so I like to see how they turned out.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I remember people screwing this up in the 1970s (Score:2)
I propose the use of AI (Score:4, Insightful)
to provide Commercial Skipping/Elimination when viewing in near real-time.
Would work on cable/youtube/OTA.
Please someone, start working on this ASAP.
Re: (Score:2)
It is much more likely that AI will be used to eliminate skipping, and force one to watch the ad before it would progress to the wanted content.
Wait for it (Score:2)
Any speech on C-Span will be sponsored by a female hygiene product manufacturer. Or the one that makes the container it comes in.
Probably true (Score:2)
And Infowars advertises quack medicine to susceptible anti-science viewers. Must be great to have an army of low-information followers to lead around like sheep.
The new Oxymoron Network (Score:2)
Relevant Moments on TV
cars (Score:2)
* the previous scene had a car in it, so here's a car commercial *
* the previous scene had a car in it, so here's a car commercial *
ad infinitum
Re: (Score:2)
* the previous scene had a car in it, so here's a car commercial *
* the previous scene had a car in it, so here's a car commercial *
ad infinitum
Sooo... nothing changes then?
Re: (Score:2)
The previous scene had a car blow up in it, here's an insurance, car, and bank lending commercial. You will need to insure and finance that new car.
There are a lot of explosions on my TV.
Would our society collapse? (Score:3)
Would our society collapse if we ceased with the aggressive marketing tactics? Would I still buy potato chips and beer if not reminded to do so daily?
Re: (Score:3)
I'm starting to come to the conclusion that maybe we should just ban all ads together.
The fact that we survived for thousands of years without them means civilization / society can certainly exist without them.
Has our species really "evolved" to the point where the modern world has become nothing more than noise / light / banner / billboard pollution and commercial propaganda???
Re: (Score:1)
Advertising is pollution. It should be treated as such.
Re: (Score:2)
That's a brilliant and succinct summary! Mind if I borrow that explanation?
Mod parent +1 Insightful.
Re: (Score:2)
The fact that we survived for thousands of years without them means civilization / society can certainly exist without them.
. . . I dunno . . . maybe we have misinterpreted prehistoric cave paintings.
Maybe, they were, in fact, just prehistoric ads . . . . ?
"Use Ugg's spearheads to kill tasty mammoths like those pictured on this wall!"
Some folks claim that prostitution is the oldest human profession . . . I think that the advertising folks were not too far behind.
Commercials ? (Score:2)
What are ADs ? I've not seen one in a long time. I use the DVR and record what I want to watch then just FF through the commercials. I really don't give a rats a$$ what they show in between the 3 or 4 30 second FF's I touch. Typically, excluding live sports I am a day behind in watching TV. Unless it is in show advertisements or product placement I just don't see them.
Re: (Score:2)
Seems backwards to me. (Score:2)
They should be generating scenes around the advertisers who buy time on the show.
Re: (Score:2)
They already generate scenes (and dialog) around advertisers. Hell, Seinfeld had that Junior Mints episode for an advertiser (Junior Mints). And that wasn't new even then. To say nothing of the "Camel News Caravan" sponsored by the cigarette company in the fucking 1940s. Hmmm, that was also on NBC.
Re: (Score:2)
I've seen kinescopes of George Burns and Gracie Allen doing this; Carnation sponsored their show and they had this character who would could turn any conversation to canned evaporated milk. That was a little ahead of its time; this was in the era of tap-dancing cigarette boxes; commercial interludes were done by the people in the show because they weren't set up to cut to different video sources.
But I'm not talking about milking the blatant obviousness of the pitch for laughs. I'm thinking about somethin
Re: (Score:2)
Subtle product placement abounds. Every logo/recognizable product is paid for.
Re: (Score:2)
I know this. That is all about exploiting the human preference for the familiar. I'm talking about things like manipulating anxieties, which commercial do all the time.
Is this new? (Score:1)
Sure the AI part is new, but If figured this had been going on for decades, only using a human to decide what categories of ads match well with the preceding or upcoming scenes instead of a computer.
I don't see why (Score:2)
"The next time you see, say, a wedding scene on a USA Network show followed by a champagne commercial, "
Young, unmarried people can't afford Champagne while long married couples will think about their misery and quickly drink some hard liquor.
Fortunately a bit later in the movie there's a suicide and the ads for helping me with suicide were too convincing.
But seriously people, cut the cord.
About time the mass media catch up to technology (Score:1)