SINGAPORE (May 7): For an industry that generates so much money, advertising has many unhappy stakeholders. “The media industry is kind of broken; because vendors are not happy with the performance rates, publishers and content owners don’t make as much money. Advertisers find difficulty engaging their audiences and users are using technology to block and skip ads. Stakeholders are not happy with the situation,” says Alexandre Yokoyama, CEO of start-up iVideoSmart.
Yokoyama believes he has an answer. iVideoSmart’s proprietary technology can tag content or place brands into existing content without the content owner having to do extensive re-editing. “For example, we can change a mug [in a video] into a Coca-Cola bottle or use the space behind an actor to place a banner,” says Yokoyama. “The message doesn’t feel like an ad. This is a more personalised type of messaging that is not intrusive or annoying, unlike a pre-roll, mid-roll or pop-up banner kind of thing.”
Content placed into videos can also be made clickable and interactive. “We have offerings for both branding and performance campaigns,” Yokoyama says. “For content owners, by partnering with us, we are able to give them a new revenue stream to make more money.
For advertisers, we have the tools to enhance the quality of the conversation. In the past, brands used push messaging but now, they are keen to have one-on-one conversations.” The start-up also operates a content exchange, where content owners can share their content with service providers such as telcos, media players and smart-TV operating software makers. Service providers can buy content for their users on the exchange and iVideoSmart will take a cut of the revenue.
Left to right: Alexandre Yokoyama, Lee Sze Chin and Vinchi Cuyegkeng
Behind the technology
What sets iVideoSmart apart is its content tagging system. The company’s artificial intelligence (AI) software can scan videos for ad placement opportunities. It can also tag various types of content that already exist in a video. Lee Sze Chin, chief operating officer of iVideoSmart, claims the system’s recognition of celebrities and brands is unmatched even by bigger players such as Google.
“We tag faces, objects, scenes and brands,” Lee says. “If you use the tools out there, they can only tell you it’s a face, not that it’s George Clooney. But we are very specific. Because we scan the scene, we can identify placement opportunities to insert products.”
Lee adds that because the tags are done by AI, they can contain three times more metadata than if they had been done by humans. The data and tags are also more standardised.
“If you really want a machine-to-machine process, it has to be in semantics that all machines understand,” he explains. “AI tagging normalises all this, using common vocabulary and semantics so that machines and algorithms can work with it.”
After a scene has been tagged, ads and product placements are inserted. Essentially, the software allows content providers to sell new ad units in content that has already been produced. To support interactive content, iVideoSmart has its own video player.
“I can overlay interactive content on our player to entice users to interact with it. You can come up withmessages around the player to reinforce messaging, creating clickable interaction, and it works for the web [browser] and mobile apps,” says Lee. “For example, whenever a certain celebrity appears, I can show an ad that he or she is an ambassador of. All this creates new ad opportunities for publishers in a way that is relevant to the content and video.”
The start-up also produces a widget that publishers can embed on their websites. “It will scan an article every time a page loads, using natural language processing, to recommend the most relevant video for the article,” says Lee. A video can then be automatically inserted on the page. “The video can come from the site itself or from our library of content. Our content exchange, iVideoExchange, links content providers to service providers and, eventually, advertisers as well. It is a one-stop shop for everyone in the digital media business.”
Publishers using this function will then be able to charge advertisers for a video view instead of a page view. Digital ad rates for a video view are a lot higher than those for a page view. “By doing that, you are increasing ad monetisation in the same space,” Lee says. “Another thing we do is enhance the quality of a video view by placing more ads [within it]. In a video, you typically see prerolls and maybe a mid-roll ad, [with] four to six ad moments to monetise. With our technology, we can create more ad units.”
Securing partnerships
To grow its presence overseas, iVideoSmart has been actively forging partnerships. Vinchi Cuyegkeng, vice-president of business development at iVideoSmart, says partnerships are the easiest way for a company with limited resources such as iVideoSmart to expand across Asia.
The focus so far has been on courting media players in the region. “We are looking for the lowest-hanging fruit — the media owners who are experiencing these pain points. That’s how we started in the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia , Hong Kong, Taiwan and India,” Cuyegkeng says.
Recently, iVideoSmart announced a partnership with GMA New Media, the digital media and technology arm of Philippines-based media company GMA Network. “There is a clear demand for more video content on GMA’s websites, and this partnership with iVideoSmart boosts our capability to be more responsive to consumer needs,” says Judd Gallares, president and chief operating officer of GMA New Media. “This dovetails perfectly with our efforts to strengthen GMA’s online footprint, not just locally but globally as well, and is without doubt a forceful means to deepen consumer engagement with the GMA brand as a leading provider of premium content.”
Lee says the company is also looking beyond Asia. “We have some global digital partnerships, some of which reach over 200 million smart TVs or other partners that provide media players,” he says.
However, Cuyegkeng emphasises that iVideoSmart’s emphasis continues to be within Asia. “We have to consolidate first. A lot of the deals we signed, the ink is barely dry. There are still countries we haven’t reached, such as Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam,” he says.
The start-up has also sought and received accreditation from the Infocomm and Media Development Authority of Singapore. “We’re the first ad-tech platform that is IMDAaccredited. It helps when we go out to the market. It shows that we are not some fly-by-night outfit. We are credible and can do what we say we can do,” Cuyegkeng says.
In December 2017, iVideoSmart secured US$3.5 million ($4.6 million) in Series-A funding from investors, including Monk’s Hill Ventures and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin. “We are a partnership of seasoned entrepreneurs who have built and backed global companies based both in Silicon Valley and Asia, and we are glad to support iVideoSmart’s management team with our expertise and network,” says Ong Peng Tsin, managing partner at Monk’s Hill Ventures. “We believe they framed the problem very well, seizing a global opportunity that can eventually lead them to become the next unicorn in the region.”
Lee emphasises that iVideoSmart is not only interested in selling its solutions, but also in seeking partners to grow the market together. “That’s how we differentiate ourselves from the rest of the market. We’re not interested in walking in and just selling the solution and walking off. We want to work with them and, as far as possible, we want to write big cheques together.”
This article appears in Issue 829 (May 7) of The Edge Singapore which is on sale this week
