>> Wurl is one of the largest ad tech,
or CTV, ad tech companies in our space. And we provide monetization,
distribution and advertising solutions to premium
content publishers and streamers. And we're introducing a new
product to agencies and brands called Brand Discovery that
launched a couple months ago. >> Well, that sounds pretty exciting. So tell me a little bit
about Brand Discovery. >> So Brand Discovery is a product
that allows advertisers to precisely match their ad with the context and emotion of that context at a scene
level right before the ad break. And it's really exciting because we
think it's the next evolution and step in contextual advertising,
understanding where that user and audience is from an emotional perspective,
not just from a content perspective. >> That's brilliant. That's brilliant, did you develop the sort
of the tech behind it, or are you using, like, somebody else's tech to
sort of identify the emotions? >> Yeah, great question. We actually developed this in-house. We've been testing this for a better part
of a year, learning how emotions and what emotions and how do you correlate to better
performance as well as ad engagement. And we find when you match emotion to
the content or live programming right before the scene, and it matches that
ad break, you get better performance. We see two to three x in our
own internal testing, and then we've seen some really exciting
test results when testing with brands. >> That's pretty cool. Now, do you have, like,
x number of categories of emotion, or is it more sort of free form? >> We get asked that a lot. There's a famous psychologist
called William Plushnick, and in the 80s, he developed
a primary wheel of emotions, and he identified eight primary emotions with
three different levels of intensity. And so our AI knows with any live
programming, because we are also at world, the largest operator of premium
fast channels in the world. We actually know what emotions
are contained in the ad, and we squeeze using our own AIs, and
our models are constantly learning. We also score the creative to
understand what emotions are there. And then when you marry the two,
we see performance. We've been testing with our partners
at an agency, with a brand advertiser, looking to reach millennial moms. And what we found is when you
matched that sentiment and the video creative with the ad break,
we saw a 7x increase in and brand awareness and
a 2x lift in purchase intent. And we keep seeing these
results being repeated. So what's exciting is we're also
discovering new categories of emotions that work. So, for example, we work with another
agency that has a customer that wanted to drive incremental foot traffic. They wanted to drive incremental sales. And what we discovered is high joy, anticipation actually leads to
a precursor to being hungry, and so that actually drove
traffic into these QSRs. And we think that there's a lot of
different categories that could be useful too. >> That's fascinating. I love that. That's great. So, just so I understand it better. So an agency uses your product to plan and
to buy, like, how does, what's the actual? Yeah.
What actually happens is they use us to understand the emotion of their creative, and then we help them understand
the emotion of the audience. We also have 60,000,000,032nd ad
impressions available on a monthly basis. So we think about what is
your starting with a KPI? What KPI are trying to start with? And we're gonna find an emotion and
an audience for that. >> Okay.
So you basically, you match your product to the ads,
not to the content? >> We actually, yeah, it's both. So we first start, and
this is a new way to approach contextual. Takes that one step further. We understand the content first and
where the scoring is and what emotions are contained and
also the creative so that we match those two, and that's
a precursor to drive better performance. >> Gotcha.
Gotcha, but so the agency would use this
product to actually plan. >> Yeah, the agency, and
we're transaction agnostic. So they wanna transact through an SSP
directly through us, their DSP. We're able to do that. >> Okay, now that's fascinating. See, I'm gonna ask you some more broad, we're gonna go to some
more broad questions. Yo, what brings you to can,
and what are you, what are some of your key takeaways thus
far to be a self-serving as you are? >> So we're here partnering with
our agencies and brands, and as we're not a new entrant to this
industry, but to agencies and brands with this advertising product, we're here
to make a bigger presence and partner. >> It's excellent. It's excellent. And what are some of the things that
you've been seeing that you think are interesting here? I was over at the Media Monks
tent at a panel yesterday, and they had a robot that an AI robot
that actually interviews you, gets to know who you are and
then renders and sketches a picture. And the accuracy of what
that does is really amazing. So, in and of itself,
does that solve a business problem? No, but there are multiple
applications for generative AI and understanding where audiences are. It's a really exciting time
to be in our business. >> Yeah, no,
it's crazy what those things can do. I was playing with the ChatGPT talking,
and I thought it was off. And I called the dog over and it sort of, we got into a whole conversation
about my dog, right? >> It's amazing. And the interaction that happens and
the machine learning language models that are being developed and
continue to evolve. When we come here next year, I think we're
gonna see an exploration explosion and innovation like no other period
of time in our industry. >> Yeah. And what's crazy, too, is it uses,
like, human voice tics. Like, it'll go, and, in the right places. And you're like, whoa. >> Yeah, and it will paraphrase back. >> Yeah.
>> So it understands what you're saying. >> Yeah, it's just wild. So I wanna go into sort of circle back
to what you're talking about with the contextual products. What's the industry response been so far? >> It's been really interesting. So we've had a lot of response to
emotional resonance where that is. I think that the challenge is
there's been status quo thinking for so long that contextual is one thing,
it's just the content. And so this thinking about emotion
as the driver or lever for performance is really new. So we spent most of this year educating
agencies, and we've got a lot of brands and agencies beginning to test even more,
and the results are fascinating. >> Yeah. And so what are some of the big
opportunities that agencies have when they're advertisers from using this? >> We talk about the right time at
the right place, at the right audience, at the right ad. And we've been talking about data and
tech and our industry for so long. What about the viewer? Where is the viewer? And the opportunity is to better
understand not only what content and programming the audience is watching,
but where they are on their emotional journey to tell better
stories to connect and resonate. And we also think that we can
offer greater transparency. So there is a lot of fragmentation
in walled gardens, and unlike linear CTV is a step above. So you know where the audiences are, but
you don't always know the right timing and placement, and I think we solve for that. And we wanna democratize CTV, so that
agencies better understand the timing of where they should be placing
the atom to have maximum impact and drive business outcome.
We've been shortlisted in not one but TWO categories for the European Video Awards presented by VideoWeek! 🏆
- Our GM of EMEA, Keith Bedford is a finalist for Commercial Leader of the Year
- Wurl is a finalist for Best CTV Ad Tech Innovation
Mark your calendars for September 26th when the winners will be announced! https://hubs.ly/Q02McyFs0#EVA24#CTV#AdTech
📣 We’ve got big news… Cineverse is teaming up with Wurl to supercharge its FAST channel portfolio: https://hubs.ly/Q02Lt4_S0
By integrating with our Global FAST Pass, Cineverse will benefit from streamlined launches, improved monetization, and advanced discovery tools.
Get ready for a new wave of fresh, free, ad-supported TV! 📺
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Multimedia Expert & Content Operator
1moGreat and informative video! Will be interesting to see how this technology progresses as it develops.