YouTube unveils dystopian AI plan to insert ads when you’re most emotionally vulnerable
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Summary
YouTube just showcased a new, AI-based ad placement system called Peak Points, designed to take advantage of a video’s most emotionally impactful moments.
The tool determines the perfect time window for inserting ads for maximum psychological effectiveness.
While YouTube does work to reduce mid-roll ad disruptions, only time will tell how aggressive this ominous, borderline dystopian ad injection method ends up.
Eons ago, before on-demand streaming, viral videos, and digital key opinion leaders, there were TV commercials. Commercials aired in two- to three-minute blocks at predetermined points throughout a show. You knew when they were coming, about how long they would be, and that you couldn’t stop them.
Things are a little different now. For example, the pause and seek functions mean you won’t have to sprint to the bathroom, and then to get the fresh popcorn from the kitchen, like millennials did last century. But some timed placements derail a thought-provoking sentence or interrupt a panning, artistic landscape shot. Even more horrifically, when a poorly timed ad placement strikes at the wrong moment, it might not be very effective at selling you stuff, which would really be a shame.
YouTube wants to change that unpredictable timing and make sure everybody gets the most from ad spots. Everybody in the various partners’ advertising departments, that is, who greatly prefer you to watch their commercial whenever you’re most emotionally vulnerable. So the world’s biggest free streaming service is introducing Peak Points, an AI-powered service to inject ads immediately following a video’s most impactful moments, thereby giving marketers the best shot at convincing you their product is worth it (Source: TechCrunch).
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Back in the olden days, shows always started at scheduled times, which were outlined in an ancient ledger called the TV Guide. That meant commercials also had their predetermined placements. Show directors explicitly planned meaningful story beats and important transitions around these commercial breaks. You would certainly never see an in-progress story suddenly give way, mid-dialogue, to a loud, flashy advertisement. A commercial break could even give viewers a helpful moment to process the dramatic turn they may have just witnessed. The advent of gapless streaming media erased that dynamic.
In that light, using AI to properly place ads in moments where they won’t disrupt a video sounds like a wonderful idea. And YouTube is supposedly doing just that. As TechCrunch’s Lauren Forristal reported from YouTube’s exclusive Upfront presentation on Wednesday, though, that isn’t what the new Peak Points format is for.
Forget the viewer’s experience for a minute. The Gemini AI-based Peak Points implementation seeks out the most emotional moments of a given video for another reason. YouTube wants to offer advertisers the most psychologically impactful moment for sharing their multimedia marketing materials. As Forristal points out, the tactic is essentially an evolution of emotion-based targeting, where ad content is delivered based on your emotions in the moment, rather than your real-world needs or demographic purchasing habits.
In fairness to YouTube, we haven’t seen the new format’s in-depth operation yet. The animation it presented, which showed a couple’s ski-slope marriage proposal followed immediately by a recommended ad placement window, doesn’t exactly inspire the warm and fuzzies. It is possible the streaming giant takes a somewhat conservative approach to avoid disjointed playback, as well as frustrated readers and creators. It is also possible this feature plays out like a real-life Black Mirror episode.
Source: YouTube via TechCrunch
During the same presentation, YouTube also revealed another, more interactive new ad format. This one gives viewers a product feed they can browse and purchase directly from, while the related ad is still in progress. And should these two ad formats ever converge, may Carl Sagan have mercy on our souls.
