I love things that make the morass of the web easier to use. And Taboola, a privately held Israeli company, is doing just that in the online video space.
The world of video is getting so chock full that it is getting even harder to find what you want, whether for entertainment, information, or whatever. Taboola's mathematical analysis model picks apart what you watch and then offers suggestions on other videos your are likely to enjoy as well.
Here's how they explain their model on their website:
Taboola’s mission is to arrange the world’s collections of online videos and transform the video discovery experience into a simple and enjoyable one.
Taboola is the provider of the world's first Personalized Video Discovery Platform for publishers, marketers and users. When you visit one of Taboola’s powered-by publishers, you will be able to enjoy a free and easy to use video recommendation solution to discover videos you like.
The company’s breakthrough technology seamlessly analyzes professional and user-generated video content, and anonymously studies the viewing patterns and behavior of viewers. Taboola is then able to predict the best subsequent videos for the viewer to watch on the publisher’s website.
Publishers can add Taboola’s video recommendation solution to their site very easily and simplify the way their viewers discover relevant videos. Taboola’s recommendation solution enhances user experience, increases time spent on site, boosts loyalty and drives profitability. Publishers will also benefit from Taboola Analytics, a free reporting console that provides analysis of their video traffic, users’ insights, viewing patterns and more.
As a business, Taboola generates revenue by providing marketers with a cost- effective and measurable opportunity to deliver contextual and behaviorally targeted sponsored messages alongside online video content. You will be introduced with ads that you may find relevant and interesting as part of the video recommendation list. We believe you should be able to distinguish between the ads and the rest of the recommendations, and therefore we mark the recommended ads as sponsored and invite you to interact with them whenever you choose.
Here's a delightfully peculiar video on Taboola that explains the entire system from the perspective of people, sites, and advertisers:
The solution comes under two trademarks:
1. ViDiscovery, which is the video recommendation engine. The recommendations come in the form of a Flash overlay left to right ticker of thumbnails, as in the example below:
There goal is not to create a video destination (and thank God for that -- we got enough of those already) but rather to improve the video experience on publisher sites.
2. DiscoverAd, which finds contextually and behaviorally appropriate ads so that sites can monetize their inventory and consumers get more relevant ads with their video content.I don't really buy into the idea that consumers prefer targeted ads, but if they make it possible to support mroe content and deeper exploration, let the tracking begin!
The service also offers a comprehensive console management tool and reporting.optimization tools.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating of course, and Taboola is offering the following statistics to demonstrate the power of its solution:
- 30-42% increase in the percent of viewers who watched an entire video
- 25-35% increase in the number of video views
- 15% increase in distinct videos viewed (video inventory reinvigoration)
More people than just me are clearly impressed by what they are up to, as they just closed $US 4.5 Million in VC, led by Evergreen. So that's excellent news, especially in these challenging times.
Check them out, especially if you are a pub or an advertiser!
Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.
so cool !!
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