Innovid Preparing Technology for Placing Interactive Virtual Items into Videos
Mark Hendrickson
14 comments »
I had the chance today to chat with Zvika Netter, the CEO and co-founder of a new Israeli startup called Innovid that is working on technology that will empower video content producers to place interactive virtual items into their videos.
Innovid has remained in stealth mode up to this point and has only begun discussing its work now that it has raised $3M from Genesis Partners in a Series A round (previous angel funding came from Jeff Pulver).
The virtual items facilitated by Innovid are basically 3D objects that producers insert into videos post-production. They’re intended to look as realistic as possible so that they blend in with the real physical environment recorded by the video. And yet, they can’t go entirely unnoticed because users are encouraged to click and perform mouse gestures with them to derive additional functionality (for example, to view a popup description about the particular item with links to external resources).
The most obvious use of these items would be to simply drop branded items into user generated content. If you’re looking to monetize your video, you could, for example, sign a deal with a beverage company and place their product on the table during an indoors scene. The virtual item representing the beverage could then respond to camera movements; when the camera moves around to the left, you also see the left side of the beverage appear. This is possible because the 3D object has been mapped to its calculated surroundings.
But with Innovid’s object placement, you could also make it so that users who click on the beverage see a description of it and the stores in which it’s sold. Or you could allow the user to even move the beverage to another location within the video or have it perform a special effect when clicked on. Whatever the complexity, the object becomes a more effective advertisement through its interactivity.
Since these are virtual objects, they can also be served up differently depending on the intended audience. Certain countries or languages could see their own types of beverages. And of course, things could be tailored to the individual as well depending on their personal preferences.
Netter isn’t saying exactly when the company plans to debut its product or even show a demo to the public, but I had a chance to watch a video of these virtual objects and I must say it looks very compelling even at this early stage. The 3D items can be made to look realistic and their integration into video is quite seamless. This is a company that should be watched as the online video industry figures out how to monetize its content most effectively.
I would be really interested to see a demo of this product.
Sounds very interesting, I will go for a demo of this product.
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
What a disgusting concept. Implying that people are buying and consuming brands that they want nothing to do with - this makes me vaguely ill.
Once people learn that their content is actually worth something they will stop giving it away rights-free willy nilly. Or at least the people producing anything worth watching will.
Networks that will have nothing to do with this technology - “Innavid Free Video Here” - will be the first things to launch after they do.
All hail the roll-over. The devil we know.
In all honesty, I think an overlaying layer that would allow users to interact with items present into a video would be much more successful and realistic. This way, the users generating content would voluntarily add a specific product in a video, and with this new technology, they could allow the users to interact with the product. I doubt the 3D objects this company will provide will be infinite, so this is why I’m not so sure they will be successful.
Where to even begin with this… quite simply their business is challenged for a few reasons:
1) Users are not “trained” to seek out areas of interaction within video. So if the product placement is “too” good, I as a consumer would have no idea where to click.
2) And point 1 brings us to #2, this does not take into account the psychology of experiencing video. When I view either short or long form video, is my intent to try to interact with it or be entertained by sitting back and viewing the video? Personally, I would find it highly annoying to have to “click around” a video to get an advertisement that I may or may not care about.
3) The television industry has been doing this for years, of course you can’t click on it (in the US, in the UK you can interact w/ TV as I am sure our European visitors can attest to). So once again, this isn’t exactly revolutionary.
andrei, check out asterpix.com. you can make videos interactive
@ Chris - this has tremendous legs -it is genius - smart advertisers, etc will line up for this + with more people on the web versus the tube this is perfect timing. Did you read the same post the rest of us read? Great report Mark.
Mike,
Similar technology can be found with the Israeli company Seambi or the UK company Mirriad, and although with both companies their focus is on dynamic placement of products into video rather than interactive objects, the leap forward is not great. Another UK company experimenting in this space is Coull.com (formerly Coull.TV).
@lesmadras : thanks, I will.
Mark,
After seeing Innovid’s demo as well. I must agree with you on your review -this is going to be big.
See more coverage on VC Cafe: http://www.vccafe.com/2008/03/.....placement/
Worth mentioning another Israeli company working on in video product placement: Orad technologies, who has been working with TV channels, mainly in sports product placement.
Dear commenter’s,
Thank you for reading this post about innovid (thanks Mark for writing it) and caring enough to comment. We’re excited to get your feedback in such a direct and candid way.
On-line video is defiantly a great space to innovate and be in – it has interesting challenges in all fronts: technology, creative and business. - We look forward to face those challenges and be a part of the change in the years to come. As soon as it will be right for us to put something live out there to share and get more specific feedback – we will do it.
As a general response to the feedback we got here, here are some things we believe in:
* Empowering content owners – let them make the decision of what’s right/wrong for them and their audiences. It’s a creative/business decision of the content owners more then any body else – same as it has been for a long time with films & TV.
* Innovid is a platform that will enable new things to happen within a on-line video – it’s up to the creators of the content to decide where they want to take it (if at all)
* Our platform is not meant for viewers to “abuse” the producers’ content (unless that’s what he/she wants them to do –)
Please feel free to send us feedback here or through our web site
All the best,
Zvika
Innovid
I hope Zvika is not claiming patents on this
but it is true that extended reality in video is the next revolution.
Having followed them closely since their early stages, my gut feeling is that this is huge. A fresh and effective new way to monetize video - which is notoriously hard-to-monetize - in a manner which is native to the medium, and not a slapped-on afterthought.
I am excited to see this becoming real.
Good luck to the Innovid team!
Great to see other players developing this space. We’re not alone.
InShot