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."

Comments

Sounds like an abuse cool technology

[ccguy]

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.

Re:Sounds like an abuse cool technology

[namgge]

...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.

Quite so. Far better to adopt VW's approach: make an entertaining advert and stick it on youtube in its own right. Then people can watch it without it being interupted by some film,

Namgge

Ads

[FredFredrickson]

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.

I hope they are patenting this to..

[the_rajah]

just sit on the patent to keep anyone from doing it. They do promise to do no evil, right?

Interesting patent

[Coopjust]

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...

boingboing tv does this

[quiddity]

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.