Silverpush Launches AI-Powered Brand Suitability Platform – Mirrors Safe

Silverpush Launches AI-Powered Brand Suitability Platform – Mirrors Safe

  04:48    Silver Push

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Mirrors Safe uses computer vision to provide unequaled brand suitability for in-video ad placement.

Singapore, 20 May 2020: Silverpush has today announced the launch of its new AI-powered brand suitability platform – Mirrors Safe. Silverpush is well-acknowledged for its AI-powered contextual video advertising and real-time moment marketing products that enable brands to achieve unprecedented reach and user engagement.

Brand safety poses a serious risk to brands. Research shows that 80% of customers will not buy products at all or reduce their buying of products from brands that place ads across any type of harmful or offensive content. 70% of the customers hold the brand or agency for hurtful ad placement.

By using computer vision to detect contexts in video, Mirrors Safe overcomes the limitations of conventional brand safety methods such as keyword-based blacklists and whitelisted channels. It accurately detects contexts in videos such as faces, objects, logos, emotions, scenes and activities and filters out harmful content across a broad range of brand unsafe categories including terrorism, violence, nudity, hate speeches, smoking, etc.

Mirrors Safe makes use of an advanced algorithm for calculation of brand suitability score. This comprehensive score takes into account five parameters. This score measures safety and suitability of the content, page and channel. The five parameters are –

• Engagement: likes, dislikes & participation that the content generates
• Safety: exclusion through in-video context detection, on-screen text, and audio sentiment analysis
• Influence: organic influence that channel/page/content creates
• Relevance: how relevant is the content in terms of its peer channel/page category
• Momentum: consistency that channel/page maintains or grows in terms of engagement

Silverpush’s CRO, Kartik Mehta, said: “What sets Mirrors Safe apart is its ability to custom define the scope of harmful contexts, that are unique to every brand. Thus, helping brands move beyond just brand safety to a truly brand suitable environment. This is limited with existing keyword and natural language processing (NLP) based blanket exclusion technologies, as these often fail to understand the complex undertones and various contexts words can be used for”.

Silverpush used Mirrors Safe to analyze about 15 million videos across the largest video hosting and sharing platforms in the South East Asia region using Mirrors Safe. The analysis found 8% to 9% of the video content as brand unsafe, i.e roughly 1 in 10 videos has some type of brand damaging content.

Silverpush compared traditional brand safety measures with Mirrors Safe to identify nudity and adult contents in videos. Result was amazing as Mirrors Safe identified 300% more unsafe videos compared to conventional brand safety methods.

This finding brings into light the inefficacy of the traditional brand safety measures and the potential harm they can do to a brand’s image. The use of traditional measures has led to serious brand safety issues for some of the biggest video platforms.

“Mirrors Safe further addresses one of the most pressing brand safety challenges of content over-blocking – a result of blanket exclusion measures offered today. This significantly limits campaign performance and often forces marketers to switch off controls in favor of reach. Mirrors Safe’s in-video context detection technology prevents over-blocking and only filters videos that actually feature unsafe contexts, ensuring brand safety without hampering monetization and performance” – Mehta added.

Visit silverpush.co/mirrors-safe/ to know more about Mirrors Safe.

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  01:56    Silver Push

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How are brands responding to COVID-19? A brand marketer survey across SEA market

Brands have been profoundly affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Brands’ response to the coronavirus pandemic not only impacts consumers’ trust today, but it will also significantly impact future purchasing decisions. Moreover, brands could face irreparable damage to their reputation due to brand safety risks associated with COVID-19 related content.

To gain insight into how brands are responding to COVID-19 pandemic, Silverpush conducted a survey of 150+ agency heads, business leads in media, and brand marketers in the SEA region in April 2020.

The survey aimed to understand how brands are adapting their marketing strategies to the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak and how they are mitigating the very real brand safety risks the rapidly growing coronavirus related content consumption poses.

How are brands re-imaging and engaging consumers in light of the pandemic?

The survey found that in the light of the pandemic, brands are reimaging by adapting their marketing tone and initiatives to consumer expectations. Only 5% respondents reported no change in brand positioning pre and post COVID-19, whereas 95% reported a distinct shift that resonates with government policies, and responds to the new consumer expectation.

Ad spending poised to decline

The industries heavily impacted by coronavirus outbreak such as travel, hospitality, physical retail and more have and will continue to paused marketing initiatives. Only 16% respondents said these industries will protect marketing budgets for a stronger comeback later.

Moreover, the survey indicates that it is unlikely that the industries such as health and FMCG that are currently experiencing higher demand will increase marketing spend to capture the demand more aggressively. Even though past recessions have shown that aggressive cuts in ad spends can lead to longer recovery cycles.

Ad Spends are shifting to digital channels

Even with significantly increased TV viewership across SEA, boosted due to government-imposed lockdowns across the region, and various studies indicating curtailed TV ad spends can adversely affect brand health measures - only 2% respondents said brands are spending more on TV and mainstream media, and a large percentage indicated rapid shift to various digital channels.

Brand safety is a key concern, and is driving ad spend cuts

Industries, except few such as health, hygiene, pharma, etc., are stringently avoiding advertising across COVID-19 related content. Publisher news sites and news channels on platforms like YouTube are facing advertisers’ block-lists due to coronavirus-related coverage.

A measure of advertisers’ confidence on brand safety tools is depicted by how despite using third party tools to ensure safe ad placements, brands are reducing marketing budgets and pausing advertising specifically to avoid association with Coronavirus related content.

71% respondents reported brands are reducing marketing budgets ranging from complete halt of marketing spends leading to up-to 80% budget cuts, in order to avoid running ads across coronavirus related content

Can context relevance be the answer?  

Emerging AI powered solutions are increasingly focusing on providing context relevance, and are fast becoming an answer to brand safety woes. AI enables processing of large volumes of data at speed, with better context, at higher scale and improved targeting efficiencies.

However, most of these contextual targeting solutions still depend on the use of NLP and semantic analysis, not truly understanding the sub-text, nuanced contexts, and complex relationship words have in written or spoken language.

AI and computer vision-powered video advertising solutions can detect in-video contexts, offering a higher degree of context relevance that surpasses limitations of traditional keyword targeting and NLP based technologies. They offer unparalleled insight for advertisers to place context-relevant in video ads and exclude unsafe content in a highly structured manner, and at the scale programmatic has traditionally offered.

You can access the full report ‘Brand Response to COVID-19 in SEA’ for detailed insights from the survey. 

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  23:28    Silver Push

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Understanding the Post Covid-19 Contactless Workplaces

The coronavirus pandemic has changed many aspects of human lives. Many people are now working from home. The post Covid-19 workplaces will not be the same conventional workplaces that people have been familiar with for years. Workplace safety will take priority over other matters.

The workplaces will undergo a radical shift from touch-based to touchless. Things like fingerprint-based biometric devices, touch-based screens for booking conference and meeting rooms, kiosks for guest check-in, handle-operated doors, etc. will have to be replaced with viable alternatives to prevent the spread of infectious diseases and ensure employee safety.

The contactless workplaces will make use of automation and touchless technology. Normal doors will be replaced by automatic doors, elevators will be voice-controlled, lighting system will adjust brightness automatically according to the time of the day, temperature control system will be adjusted by gestures or voice, and water dispensers will automatically pour water on keeping a bottle or glass below the tap.

The washrooms will have touchless automatic faucets, hand-free soap dispensers, and automatic flush powered by infrared technology. These products will not only reduce spread of germs, but also save water and soap. Along with touchless hand dryer, touchless paper towel dispenser will also be provided.

The contactless workplaces will make use of contactless attendance system powered by facial recognition technology in place of fingerprint-based biometric attendance system. A computer vision powered face-recognition-based attendance system can easily recognize the faces of employees for the purpose of attendance. Computer vision is an advanced field of artificial intelligence that enables computers to see like human beings and easily identify visual content in images and videos.

Besides powering the face recognition biometric systems, computer vision powered solutions can help employers ensure wearing of face masks by employees and enforce workplace social distancing and sanitization compliance. This technology can also bring into notice if an employee coughs or sneezes.

As an employee health and safety measure, workplaces will have to make use of touchless temperature recording technology. This technology will work by using thermal sensors for recording temperature of both employees and visitors. If any anomaly is detected, it will be instantly reported to the concerned department.

Post Covid-19 workplaces will not allow sharing of accessories such as headphones and each employee will be provided individual accessories along with laptops or desktops. Professional cleaning and sanitization protocols will be regularly implemented for workstations, devices, conference and meeting rooms, reception area, cafes, etc. Easy access to hand sanitizers will be provided throughout the workplace for both employees and visitors. The sensor-based touchless garbage bins will provide a safe way to dispose of garbage.

Workplaces will incorporate antimicrobial materials into interior design elements such as wall paints, door sheets, window shades, etc. Such materials will resist the growth of microbes, thus providing a cleaner surface. To ensure workplace social distancing, workplaces will follow a de-clustering approach by keeping individual employee desks wide apart from each other. This can be achieved by using a larger office area or by creating branch offices. Encasing individual desks will provide added protection from transmission through respiratory droplets. Post Covid-19 workplaces will require advanced air filtration technology in order to effectively filter out disease causing microorganisms.

The post Covid-19 contactless workplaces, by making use of advanced technologies, will help employers to carry out their business, while ensuring employee health and safety.

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  22:06    Silver Push

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Top Applications of Face Recognition Technology

The work on face recognition technology started decades ago, but only recently this technology has achieved widespread use. A facial recognition system is used to identify a person from his face. A person can be identified when he is present physically, or from his photograph or video.

Once face detection and analysis was considered a part of science fiction. But, now with the introduction of this technology in the smartphones, many people have become well acquainted with its use. There are many use cases deploying facial recognition technology, some of them are given here below:     

Access control

Whether it is about having access to a smartphone, or to a building, or crossing a country’s border, facial recognition technology is there to make it as secure as possible. By deploying this technology places such as a school, workplace, residence, etc. become highly secure as only authorized persons can enter into the premises.

Along with sensor-based automatic doors, face recognition allows touchless entry and exit for employees. This will enable employers to ensure employee health and safety at post Covid-19 contactless workplaces.

Crime prevention and identification of criminals

Facial recognition technology is deployed for conducting police checks. In the U.S, law enforcement agencies use this technology to run searches against licensed drivers’ database. To identify a suspect in a huge crowd, a large aerial camera fitted on a drone and connected to a face detection system can be used. In retail outlets, this technology can identify a person with a history of shoplifting right at the time when he is entering the premises.

Facial recognition-based CCTV systems can be used to find missing children, victims of human trafficking, and criminals. In 2018, Delhi police identified 2930 missing children while test running a new facial recognition software.

Attendance tracking

Although fingerprint-based biometric attendance systems have proved to be effective at workplaces, they carry an inherent risk of transmission of contagious diseases such as Covid-19. Being touch-based, they can easily transfer viruses and bacteria from one person to another. Face recognition attendance systems, powered by computer vision, work in a contactless manner, thus providing an edge over the fingerprint-based systems. They will help prevent spread of infectious diseases at post Covid-19 workplaces.

Video advertising

Computer vision powered face detection has revolutionized the video advertising industry. By recognizing faces of the characters in the online videos, this technology enables placing of in-video ads that are in line with what a user is watching. Besides faces, computer vision technology can easily identify emotions, objects, scenes and activities in video. This advanced form of in-video contextual advertising is highly effective, allowing brands to achieve unprecedented reach and user engagement.   

Health

Face recognition has been used to diagnose diseases. A face detection software has been used by the researchers at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) in the United States to successfully diagnose a rare, genetic condition known as DiGeorge syndrome. Facial analysis has made it possible to track medication use by a patient in a more accurate manner. This technology has also been used in the assessment of pain levels in order to support pain management.

From contactless attendance to video advertising, there are varied uses of the face recognition technology. More of its use cases will surface in the near future as this technology is progressing at a fast pace.

M-Shield, developed by Silverpush, is an AI-powered facial recognition-based attendance, access management and human monitoring system. This social distancing platform makes workplaces and public spaces safe by preventing the spread of contagious diseases such as Covid-19.

M-Shield makes use of facial recognition technology, powered by computer vision, for contactless attendance, entry/exit access management, and mask and social distancing compliance. Its touchless attendance tracking system accurately identifies the faces of employees, even if they are wearing masks. It ensures mask compliance and detects whether the mask is properly worn or not. M-Shield ensures workplace social distancing by tracking minimum distance requirements between employees. Its contactless temperature monitoring technology detects any anomaly in body temperature. It offers added safety by generating an alert if someone coughs, sneezes, or do a handshake.

M-Shield will help employers re-introduce workforce back into offices while ensuring employee health and safety, and compliance with Covid-19 related policies. It will enable government to ensure public safety, when the Covid-19 lockdown lifts.

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  21:56    Silver Push

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Is Computer Vision the Sure-Shot Solution to Brand Safety Woes?

Today, brands are not only concerned about the return on investment (ROI) when they run an advertising campaign, but also about where their ads are appearing. They don’t want their ads to be placed against any sort of harmful, unsafe or inappropriate content, as any single placement of an ad against such content can critically damage brand image. The scale and speed at which the programmatic advertising works has made it quite difficult for brands to ensure brand safety.

Brand safety has become a major concern since few years back, when one after another disastrous ad placement issues came into light. It was found that some famous brands were unknowingly supporting terrorism by ad placement against hate videos on YouTube. Another finding that shook the video advertising world was that ads of some of the biggest brands were seen running against the videos of child exploitation.

Brand safety poses a serious challenge to brands. The placement of ads against unsafe video content not only puts a brand’s reputation at stake, but it also leads to loss of consumers’ trust in the brand. This, in turn, leads to brand avoidance and decrease in sales.   

There are some brand safety measures that advertisers have been using, but these methods are quite far from being fully reliable and effective. A keyword blacklist details words and phrases that describe content against which a brand does not want to have its ads placed. But this keyword-based brand safety method does not take into account nuances and context, thereby letting in some unsafe placements or blocking some safe placements.

Using whitelisted channels limits the reach that a brand can achieve through social media platforms. Another reason that makes whitelisted channels a less sought-after option is that this method is quite expensive.

Using manual methods for filtering out unsafe content is not feasible keeping in view the enormous volume of video content that is uploaded on an hourly basis.

By bringing in context to advertising, artificial intelligence offers a remedy to brand safety woes. Although artificialintelligence advertising solutions that use machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP) and semantic analysis, work by understanding the context of a webpage and automatically regarding content as unsafe or appropriate, they fail to effectively ensure brand safety, especially, in video advertising.

The true remedy to brand safety woes is provided by AI advertising technology that makes use of computer vision. Computer vision enables detection of contexts in video with high accuracy, thus allowing advertisers to display context-relevant in-video ads in a brand safe manner.  

By using computer vision, computers are able to see, identify and process images and videos just like human beings do or even better than that. Computer vision based in-video context detection technology can easily and accurately identify faces, objects, emotions, logos, activities and scenes in videos. This enables advertisers to display in-video ads that are fully in line with the video content that a user is watching, while strictly avoiding ad placement against any content that has been regarded inappropriate or unsafe by a brand.

The computer vision based in-video context detection technology provides double benefits – firstly, it displays ads against the relevant video content, thus boosting the chances of a user’s engagement with the ad, and secondly, it effectively avoids ad placement against brand unsafe content. With computer vision, brands can really play safe when it comes to displaying in-video ads on online video platforms.     

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Impact of Coronavirus Outbreak on TV and Online Media: Implications for Advertisers

Impact of Coronavirus Outbreak on TV and Online Media: Implications for Advertisers

  05:05    Silver Push

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Coronavirus outbreak is impacting a large number of industries. The TV, online media and advertising industries are no exceptions.

Amid coronavirus crisis, people are staying home and turning to TV and internet for both information and entertainment. But what is being broadcasted on TV and what the viewers are watching are both changing.

According to the Comscore TV viewing report for U.S. that compared March 16 to 20, 2020 data to the same week in 2019 -

1. ·       Viewing of cable news networks increased by 73%. Viewing of financial cable news networks, especially, witnessed a significant surge.
2. ·      Viewing of the big four broadcast networks (ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox) increased by about 19%.
3. ·       Daytime viewing of children’s programming networks increased by about 31%.

As no sports events are being held, sport programs’ viewership has been hit hard. According to a report by Business Insider, TV networks covering sports events may witness a decline in viewership by 9% to 25%.   

Along with the cancellation of sports and other live events, the production of TV shows and movies has come to a halt. Movie theatres have been shut down. Studios are either postponing the release of their movies, or planning to premiere them on the streaming platforms. Some are making their movies streamable on demand.

Unlike traditional sports, e-sports firms are not shutting down their tournaments, but are rather continuing them online. Esports events can be watched live online or later on when they are uploaded to sites like YouTube. The coronavirus outbreak has provided an opportunity to e-sports industry to build its fanbase by showing their games online to those who would otherwise be consuming some other content. It is also providing a great opportunity to e-sports sector in the media rights space.

Rather than running their tournaments behind the closed doors, some traditional sports’ organizers are also switching to virtual simulations.

According to Nielsen, as more and more people are staying in home, video viewing in the United States could increase by 60%. Free and low-priced streaming services could, especially, gain benefit during this time of crisis. Experts also speculate that if due to the coronavirus outbreak, a steep rise in unemployment rate occurs, the majority of people will choose to cancel TV or high-priced streaming services subscriptions in favor of free or low-priced streaming services.

Data shows that during this coronavirus pandemic, the viewership of content via OTT services has sharply increased. According to a report by Comscore, the year-over-year (YOY) growth in the number of over the top (OTT) households using connected TVs and streaming boxes/sticks was 39% and 47% respectively (March 13 to 16, 2020 data was compared to March 15 to 18, 2019 data).

For the same period, the year-over-year growth in the time spent (total OTT hours) with OTT content on connected TVs and streaming boxes/sticks was 34% and 20% respectively. Streaming boxes and sticks accounted for 56% of OTT streaming hours in the month of March, while the share of connected TVs was 32%.

For the period spanning 1 to 16 March 2020, Netflix accounted for 37% of OTT hours on connected TV, while YouTube accounted for 21 %, Amazon Prime Video – 16%, Hulu – 12%, and others – 14%. For the same time period, the share of streaming platforms on streaming boxes/sticks was 21% of OTT hours for Netflix, 17% for Hulu, 16% for YouTube, 14% for Amazon Prime Video, and 32% for others.

The increase in the viewership of connected TVs and streaming boxes/sticks during the coronavirus crisis offers a great opportunity to advertisers to capitalize on online video content for brand promotion. Some marketers are now thinking of redirecting their advertising investments from television to streaming platforms such as Netflix and YouTube.   

By placing ads that are in line with the video content that the users are actively engaging with, advertisers can effectively capture the users’ attention. Video advertising campaigns run using keyword- or affinity-based targeting often achieve sub-optimal results. AI advertising that leverages the power of computer vision enables advertisers to run highly effective online video advertising campaigns.

Computer vision allows detection of in-video contexts - logos, faces, objects, scenes, activities and emotions - with high accuracy. By serving ads that are relevant to the detected contexts, advertisers can boost user engagement and reach. Besides enabling the advertisers to place the right ad against the right video content, computer vision also enables advertisers to avoid ad placement against brand unsafe content, including coronavirus content. Thus, AI-powered in-video contextual advertising boosts brand awareness and sales, while at the same time ensures brand safety.

As online video consumption is exploding during the coronavirus pandemic, advertisers can effectively capitalize on this opportunity through AI-powered in-video contextual advertising.  

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Steps for Building an Effective Video Advertising Strategy

Steps for Building an Effective Video Advertising Strategy

  04:59    Silver Push

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The popularity of video content is ever increasing. Consumers are now watching more online videos in comparison to any time before. Experts predict that the online video viewing time for an average person will reach 100 minutes per day by the year 2021.

For brands and advertisers, video advertising has become a high-valued tool. To advertise through online videos, you need an effective advertising strategy. Following the steps given below can help you build a video advertising strategy that is powerful and effective –

Determine your advertising goal

You should be clear with what you want to achieve through your advertising campaign. Whether you want your targeted audience to buy your product, avail your service, contact you, become aware of your brand, or become strongly associated with your brand – you should determine beforehand.

This should be the first and fundamental step as your entire online video advertising campaign will be based on this step. If you want to increase brand awareness, your video should effectively communicate your brand’s stories and values. If you want to create a sale, your video ad should be attractive and engaging enough with a call to action for driving a profitable response from customers.  

Identify the audience you want to target

You should define the audience for which you want to create and run the online video ad campaign. To define the target audience, you can consider the following –

·       Identify the group of people whose needs your products or services meet.

·       Look for common characteristics in your existing customer base such as age, gender, education, interests, location, income, purchasing habits, marital status, etc. This will help you target your potential customers.

·       Know the audience of your competitors’ video campaigns.

Select the right advertising platform

For displaying video ads to your customers, various advertising platforms are available. Google Ads is an advertising platform from Google that allows you to run your video ads on YouTube and Google video partner sites & apps.

YouTube is a mammoth video content platform with over two billion monthly signed-in users. Through YouTube advertising, marketers can effectively promote brands and amplify sales. For setting up a video campaign on YouTube, you have to first upload your ad video to YouTube. After that you are required to choose your target audience. You will have to choose the locations where you want your ads to show up along with the types of users that you want should watch your ads. Then, you have to decide how much you want to spend on your video ad campaign.

By using Facebook Ads Manager, you can easily create ad campaigns for Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, or Audience Network. This powerful ad tool provides a wide range of functionalities including creating ads, managing ads, ad tracking, and ad performance analysis. Your campaign parameters such as objective and audience can be easily selected through this tool.

Some of the other advertising platforms for running video ad campaigns include Yahoo! Gemini (now called Verizon Media Native), Twitter videoads and LinkedIn video ads, among others.

Your choice of the advertising platform should take into account factors such as nature of your business, areas you serve – local, national or worldwide, and target audience. For example, if you run a local business, then LinkedIn may not be of use for you. Another example that can be cited here is that if you want to sell women’s products, then one of best way to do so is to advertise on women channels on YouTube.  

Traditional advertising vs. AI advertising

Conventionally, ads are placed on the basis of factors such as consumers’ web browsing behavior, purchasing history, and keywords. The results achieved by traditional advertising campaigns are sub-optimal and raise privacy concerns. Artificial intelligence advertising solutions that use natural language processing (NLP) and semantic analysis for achieving contextual relevance also have their own limitations.

AI advertising technology that makes use of computer vision to accurately detect contexts in video offer much greater degree of context relevance than any other type of video advertising technology. Computer vision has revolutionized online video advertising industry including YouTube advertising. By using computer vision powered in-video contextual advertising, you can place ads that are in line with the content the users are actively engaging with, thereby significantly boosting user engagement and reach. This technology also prevents placement of ads against brand unsafe content, thus ensuring brand safety.

Mobile vs. desktop video ads 

People are increasingly using their smartphones for consuming online media including video content. Smartphone users tend to watch more video ads in comparison to desktop users. According to a Google report, video ads are more viewable on mobile than desktop. The report found that video ad viewability across the web, excluding YouTube, was 83% for mobile, while for desktop, it was 53%. According to Akamai’s report, when compared on a weekly basis, significantly more mobile users search and buy products than desktop users. Before creating a video ad campaign, you should consider these points.  

Create a video ad for each sales funnel stage

Target different groups of audiences that are in different sales funnel stages with a different video ad. You should create a specific video ad for a particular stage of sales funnel. To facilitate purchase making by customers, show them ads repetitively to an extent.

The above-mentioned steps including computer vision powered contextual advertising will help you create and run high-performance video advertising campaigns, enabling you to realistically achieve your marketing goals.

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