Microsoft unveils video and contextual targeting features

The Contextual Ads for Video offer uses address recognition engineering to translate the audio from online clips into text, which can then be matched to particular marketing offering. Another merchandise, Intelligent Bug Ads, topographic point small clickable ad overlays carefully placed within video watercourse.

Other engineering presented included Air Wave, which uses Microsoft's Surface touch silver screen technology for interactive ads in topographic point like malls or amusement parks; Visual Product browse, a merchandise matching tool that usher shoppers to merchandise similar to what they've already viewed; and new dohickey to help marketers avoid unsuitable content and select search keywords based on user hunt and content behaviors.

"Online advertising has been centered around keywords for too long," said Tarek Najm, an applied scientist for Microsoft's advertising and concern intelligence scheme, adding the "next wave of ad is going to use new algorithmic rule and engineering" that show ads based on consumer intent.

One of Microsoft's demos featured a cyclosis episode of the Charlie Rose Show. The clip was run through a address analysis algorithmic rule that scanned the audio from the programme and translated it into text. The text was then used to query against a database of keywords, thus displaying relevant ads in the right column at precise times during the programme. Other firms to promise similar capableness have included Scanscout and Blinkx.

Microsoft said the chemical mechanism can differentiate between talker and even conversations, parse the linguistic context of what's being said, and use that data to further refine the ad arrangement.

Another demo depicted technology to flag and score Web pages based on traits that may offend brand advertisers or mention them in a critical context. Marketers might be tempted to use the feature to leverage a competitor's negative press, but James Colburn, a group marketing manager for adCenter, said that wouldn't be an issue.

"We wouldn't allow that to happen," he said. "We'll have rules that would prevent situations like that."

Microsoft's smart overlay ad technology puts it in the company of Google's YouTube, VideoEgg and other video ad networks, though the format has some important differences from those firms' offerings. It works by scanning a given video and displaying tiny clickable ads in the corner, top, or side of the frame. The innovation, Microsoft said yesterday, lies in making the bugs as unobtrusive as possible. A demo clip contained twenty seconds or so of unchanging blue sky above a racetrack with little or no movement. AdLab's algorithm automatically noted the lack of motion and gently faded an ad for Audi into the unused space. The ad disappeared when the camera changed, losing the sky.

Like the rest of the components, these ad bugs can combine with all the other technologies above, but the real question that nobody asked was whether or not there would be any way for them to fit in with the advances that Yahoo! Has made. Though nobody said the name, Yahoo! Was the elephant in the room.