According to Aaron Goldman, VP of Client Strategy & Development at Resolution Media, an Omnicom Media Group Company, Personalization in the video space is essentially the model cable TV was built on, where networks created and clustered their programming based on targeted audience demographic profiles. The power of interactivity has taken personalization one step further, as evidenced by TiVo and Netflix. However, mapping personal preference is easier when dealing with TV shows or movies, because of their long-form content. It is much more difficult to build a personalization engine around the short video clips that are so popular online, especially when dealing with user generated content (UGC). It can be very challenging to categorize something like a 3-minute clip of the Urban Ninja. Also, people are much more likely to watch short-form video impulsively, as it is not a big-time commitment.
Just because someone watched a clip doesn’t mean it interested her. This is why video providers must allow people to take control of their personalization. One way to do this is through user ratings. But a simple thumb’s up/thumb’s down rating system like TiVo is not enough. Even Netflix’ comprehensive ratings system, which includes specifying favorite genres and movies, doesn’t give the true picture. The key is to overlay search activity. Merely knowing that a viewer watched a video tells you very little about the person. Knowing whether or not the viewer liked it starts to give you some insight. But knowing what the viewer was looking for when she decided to watch, will allow you to close the loop and truly understand user preferences. Think of how much more powerful it is to know that a viewer watching the Urban Ninja video followed a query for “funny action video.” Couple that with the viewer’s 5-star rating and designation of the clip as a “favorite” and, the next time the viewer searched for “funny action videos,” you’ll have a much better idea of what the user is hoping to discover.
Consider ClipBlast, with its stated mission as “to organize and make the video web relevant, fast, and simple to navigate.” ClipBlast has created a comprehensive video “search and navigation” tool, which allows users to set preferences. This combines past viewing history with self-selected interests, to deliver a set of personalized results that update in real time, as new video is published on the Web. In addition to “my categories” and “my providers” settings, ClipBlast includes “my searches,” so that actual queries are incorporated. As with any emerging digital media technology, the key to continued innovation is monetization. Another critical element when it comes to video personalization is scale. ClipBlast is counting on the strong demand for point-of-query advertising opportunities to deliver sustainable revenue. ClipBlast allows advertisers to target specific categories, providers, or search queries.
To achieve scale, ClipBlast crawls the Web and accepts video RSS feeds so it can amass large volumes and diversity of video content, even indexing Netflix videos. This is because, in order to effectively create a personalization engine, users must be given the ability to choose from a wide array of video assets, including professional and user-generated, as well as short and long-form. Otherwise, there aren’t enough variables in play to drill down and make accurate predictions. The size of the video index is just one side of the scale coin. User adoption is also critical. A large user base is not only important for learning and perfecting a personalization algorithm, but for generating advertiser interest. To achieve this, ClipBlast is distributing a widget that webmasters can embed on their sites to allow visitors to easily access its index. Today, ClipBlast averages only 10,000-15,000 page/video views per day, but it is growing quickly. http://youtube.com/watch?v=RldlNhQ5aSU
This is where GoogleClick comes in, as the biggest online ad-serving company in the world, DoubleClick has tremendous scale. DoubleClick’s Motif rich media product has evolved through development and acquisition into a leading online video serving platform. Integrating the back-end analytics that DART provides to measure post-click interaction with the front-end query activity that Google captures, all the pieces are in place to map intent to content. Given Google’s innovation in the personalization space, it is well positioned to capitalize on the emergence of online video, particularly after its investment in YouTube. If Google can get the networks to share their content, it will be primed to really blow this video thing out of the water. Even Otherwise, Google can move to the ClipBlast/blinkx model and focus on simply indexing content instead of hosting it, which, is the model that Google was founded on. Think of GoogTube as a pure-play search engine!
Thanks ResolutionMedia.com, April 2007.
Just because someone watched a clip doesn’t mean it interested her. This is why video providers must allow people to take control of their personalization. One way to do this is through user ratings. But a simple thumb’s up/thumb’s down rating system like TiVo is not enough. Even Netflix’ comprehensive ratings system, which includes specifying favorite genres and movies, doesn’t give the true picture. The key is to overlay search activity. Merely knowing that a viewer watched a video tells you very little about the person. Knowing whether or not the viewer liked it starts to give you some insight. But knowing what the viewer was looking for when she decided to watch, will allow you to close the loop and truly understand user preferences. Think of how much more powerful it is to know that a viewer watching the Urban Ninja video followed a query for “funny action video.” Couple that with the viewer’s 5-star rating and designation of the clip as a “favorite” and, the next time the viewer searched for “funny action videos,” you’ll have a much better idea of what the user is hoping to discover.
Consider ClipBlast, with its stated mission as “to organize and make the video web relevant, fast, and simple to navigate.” ClipBlast has created a comprehensive video “search and navigation” tool, which allows users to set preferences. This combines past viewing history with self-selected interests, to deliver a set of personalized results that update in real time, as new video is published on the Web. In addition to “my categories” and “my providers” settings, ClipBlast includes “my searches,” so that actual queries are incorporated. As with any emerging digital media technology, the key to continued innovation is monetization. Another critical element when it comes to video personalization is scale. ClipBlast is counting on the strong demand for point-of-query advertising opportunities to deliver sustainable revenue. ClipBlast allows advertisers to target specific categories, providers, or search queries.
To achieve scale, ClipBlast crawls the Web and accepts video RSS feeds so it can amass large volumes and diversity of video content, even indexing Netflix videos. This is because, in order to effectively create a personalization engine, users must be given the ability to choose from a wide array of video assets, including professional and user-generated, as well as short and long-form. Otherwise, there aren’t enough variables in play to drill down and make accurate predictions. The size of the video index is just one side of the scale coin. User adoption is also critical. A large user base is not only important for learning and perfecting a personalization algorithm, but for generating advertiser interest. To achieve this, ClipBlast is distributing a widget that webmasters can embed on their sites to allow visitors to easily access its index. Today, ClipBlast averages only 10,000-15,000 page/video views per day, but it is growing quickly. http://youtube.com/watch?v=RldlNhQ5aSU
This is where GoogleClick comes in, as the biggest online ad-serving company in the world, DoubleClick has tremendous scale. DoubleClick’s Motif rich media product has evolved through development and acquisition into a leading online video serving platform. Integrating the back-end analytics that DART provides to measure post-click interaction with the front-end query activity that Google captures, all the pieces are in place to map intent to content. Given Google’s innovation in the personalization space, it is well positioned to capitalize on the emergence of online video, particularly after its investment in YouTube. If Google can get the networks to share their content, it will be primed to really blow this video thing out of the water. Even Otherwise, Google can move to the ClipBlast/blinkx model and focus on simply indexing content instead of hosting it, which, is the model that Google was founded on. Think of GoogTube as a pure-play search engine!
Thanks ResolutionMedia.com, April 2007.
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