LAS VEGAS — While there’s lots of people populating video content, it takes too many others to screen and label it. That’s where artificial intelligence can provide a big assist.
While “it’s early days” in such use of AI, “it’s an exciting solution to bring to market,” says Scott Braley, GM, Advertising Platforms, Ooyala, which recently announced a partnership with Microsoft’s machine learning platform.
In this interview with Beet.TV at the 2017 NAB Show, Braley outlines the potential benefits of machine learning for helping advertisers steer clear of unsafe environments. He also suggests a “do over” in which the best practices of linear and digital television would be brought to bear on engaging viewers in the quickly expanding OTT space.
There is some labeling and metadata associated with individual pieces of content, but the process usually doesn’t go far enough, according to Braley. “Certainly when you get into user-generated content, it’s very difficult to get all of that labeled properly,” he says.
AI can be deployed to score, label and categorize content “at scale and with more efficiency.” This would pave the way for more content available programmatically “without having to deal with armies of people just reviewing content manually.”
As more consumers opt for alternatives to pay subscription TV models, younger audiences in particular are flocking to OTT viewing. Common traits among this cohort are media gratification and choice.
“We think from targeting standpoint, the OTT environment is a great hybrid opportunity to do over in a sense,” says Braley.
Combining the best practices of the digital and television worlds would mean not deploying the hyper targetability and addressability of digital and eschewing “index-based measurement models like Nielsen for TV.”
Braley sees this approach involving targeting on a household level using as much census-level data as possible and “decisioning dynamically but maybe not with the one-to-one, user-base that we’re doing in digital today.”
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the 2017 NAB Show in Las Vegas. The series is sponsored by Ooyala. For more coverage of NAB, please visit this page.
