Streaming Media - December 2007/January 2008 - (Page 50) director of strategic communications at the National Retailer Federation, uses TVEyes to monitor news about any of its members or the organization itself; she says it’s particularly useful during the holidays when mentions skyrocket. Davis manages this by getting a daily digest of all mentions by email. What’s more, she can access broadcasts and email meaningful snippets to her boss. “With this service we can very easily splice a threeminute segment and email it to the CEO so she can watch it on her computer.” Podzinger takes yet another approach by using voice recognition technology developed for the U.S. government by parent company BBN. Alex Laats, Podzinger’s CEO, says that by using this approach and then categorizing the audio and video files by subject, Podzinger makes it easier to pinpoint the desired file and the desired element within the file. “The basics of what we do is making audio and video searchable using full-text search and we also do natural language processing in order to topic-classify it and to make the content more readily accessible,” Laats says. This means that if you are looking for a mention of New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, you can enter his name in the search box, or you could search for “sports” and “baseball” to find him. Once found, Podzinger not only displays the relevant podcast or video, it shows you exactly where in the broadcast the mention occurs, sparing you the time it would take to listen to the whole thing. the search is on Figure 3. TVEyes monitors broadcasts for its subscriber clients using a hybrid of the phonetic and dictionary approach. Some use the service to track media mentions of a term or company name. Show Me the Money Regardless of the approach each of these companies is taking, as with text search the goal for many is to monetize the search process in the same fashion Google and others have done, by displaying relevant ads while the audio or video file plays. Price believes the ability to associate keywords with audio Figure 4. Podzinger lists illustrate each reference to a search term hit with a notch in the player. It also lists the hits along the side, and you can simply click each one to play it. and video content will drive monetization. “I’ve seen products from Nexidia and TVEyes that go through the video and look at the text and then associate keyword advertisements with it. If the and he predicts that the numbers could be in the $5–$10 person being interviewed talks about a trip to Rome, the billion range in overall revenue from multimedia text ads. ads on the side might turn out to be about traveling to He also points out that, “There will, of course, be some Rome. The person then talks about moving onto growth, but the pace of reallocation will far exceed the Florence, then there will be hotels in Florence listed. So growth of the ad space just as it has happened with the I think that’s one thing that can make video much more emergence of online ads.” financially feasible,” Price says. blinkx navigates the revenue stream by a different Not surprisingly, Ives agrees, saying that using voice route. Chandratillake says the online site is really a recognition technology can more accurately match ads showcase for the technology, and the company’s revenue to the content of the file. Laatz concurs and believes that plan is to license the technology. “How we make money ad revenue over the next 5 to 10 years will flow from other is licensing our technology in various ways. This is areas such as print, TV, and radio to online video ads, primarily licensing the index to other people who want 50 STREAMING MEDIA December 2007/January 2008
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