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Google's New Patent on Commercial Breaks
theodp writes "What could be more annoying than having ads precede online videos? How about having commercials interrupt the videos? That's the premise behind a newly-published Google patent application for Using Viewing Signals in Targeted Video Advertising."
The interesting part of the patent is not that they interrupt the video to show a commercial (surely there is prior art on that), but rather than the commercial breaks are determined automatically by analyzing the video and audio (detecting scene changes for example).
Also, they gather 'interaction data' with the first commercial, and use it for the following ones.
There's a bidding system to buy advertisement slots on specific video, so if there's a very hot video in say, youtube, you can put your commercial there almost inmediately... seems like the best way to maximize advertising costs.
I'm one of the few that don't care about ads, show 'em. Keep services free! But only under the following conditions:
1. There's a subscription service to get rid of ads. I use sites like YouTube enough that I'd pay to get rid of 15 second ads every video play.
2. Non interrupting ads only. At the beginning, at the end, what have you. But none in the middle, please.
3. Get a variety of ads. I'm sick of HULU playing the same 2 ads every three minutes. Seriously, it makes me want the product they're advertising even less.
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
just sit on the patent to keep anyone from doing it. They do promise to do no evil, right?
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
The history (and part of the reason for its success) of google's ad business has been that the ads they serve *aren't* annoying. No flashing banner ads, no "punch the monkey to win a prize", just small clean fonted textural links. That being the case I would be very surprised if they implement this patent as read - they are too smart to do something that daft.
The problem of delivering advertising with digital video is a real one for online activities, so I don't doubt google are working on it - but what is guaranteed is that they know if they annoy people then they will just go elsewhere.
So, having read the patent filing;
-They're looking to dynamically take popular videos and put commercials in at points deemed good by the computer
-They put in something that they think you will like (based on your Google history/ad watching history/content of the video)
-They take your reaction to the newest ad and use it to better insert ads for both content and length. Maybe you like computing ads, or maybe you'll interact if the commercials are less often but longer (30 secs instead of 15 secs maybe).
-Ads are taken by bid amounts- it'll prioritize ads that pay more to Google.
-It'll automatically insert ads as it sees fit- if it can't find relevance, you don't get charged; if it finds people with interests similar to your ad, it will get inserted.
This falls into a huge debate under the "don't be evil" motto. On one hand, Google is trying to make advertising $ better spent and make ads that the viewer will actually like. On the other hand, it opens a whole can of worms on privacy. One big one I see is shared computers. Having more than one user can really mess with the profile building it is trying to do...
Personally, I see any implementation of this as a massive intrusion on my privacy- if YouTube implemented this, I'd stop going there. But Slashdotters aren't representative of the internet population as a whole; will people really mind targeted ads? Most people don't see adwords as an invasion of privacy, but this approaches a whole new level...
That technology is still in use; ever hear a burst of fast touch-tone at a program break? That's this system at work. Other than that "using a computer" BS, what they're claiming is exactly what we were doing 30 years ago.
For what it's worth, reliably detecting and decoding those touch-tone burst sequences using the technology available then was more than a little challenging. The Signetics 567 was brand new and looked so promising - but turned out to be a time sink. Never could get those little PLL chips to lock up fast enough and reliably enough. The real solution was a big mess of discrete analog stuff; those were the days...
See http://tv.boingboing.net/2008/03/12/goobees-animated-can.html which gets interrupted halfway through, completely ruining a short animation. idiots. what a hateful way to treat content.
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. hmmm
I first modded this down as a troll, since Analytics is just a regular statistics scripts for webmaster. However, then I got it; its so clever. That Analytics service is used on millions of websites, almost every site uses it (slashdot aswell). Its a great tool, easy to use and free aswell. Theres no ads, and theres no any paid or premium user like service. And you know why? It brings more data to Google than anyone could ever imagine. Google Analytics script is now on almost every site on internet. They could and can easily track users movement on internet, from site to site. So what I can fastly see, they can track users both with ads and the more hidden (and cleverly disguised) Analytics. And you know even their file systems are designed so that the data takes months or even years to _really_ delete? And the best part is, they dont need any browser toolbar thingies to track users.. Ah silly me. They do have that aswell :)
* If you dont hear anything back from me in 24h, you know I revealed their deepest secrets *