Vidy: Incentivised and relevant smart video ad campaigns
Online ads are not just a constant source of annoyance for users. They are also a huge waste of money for advertisers and a great way for publishers to lose readers. By this point, people are so tired of them that pop-up ads and clickbait can be said to be ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst. But for many sites, there is still no more reliable revenue source, and as for advertisers, they feel that they cannot afford to cede ground to their competition.
The Vidy Foundation seeks to provide an alternative model for video ads, based on a number of cutting edge technologies such as the blockchain, neural networks, natural language processing (NLP) and a new, proprietary way to embed videos directly into text. Combined with a token incentive scheme, those technologies should transform the way we experience the Internet.
How will Vidy's ad model work?
Advertisers wishing to use Vidy will be able to sign up to the platform, connect their cryptowallet and unlock one of four tiers, from Free to Platinum, based on the amount of VidyCoins (VIDY) they are willing to stake. All but the first tier give access to a dashboard that will allow them to monitor and manage their ad campaigns in real time, with the help of live statistics and analytics. Every new video will be transcribed and analyzed by Vidy's convolutional neural network. Together with specifications provided by the advertiser, such as keywords, campaign dates and target demographics, this insight is used by the platform's NLP protocol (ran by VidyCoin miners) to match them to pages on the sites of participating publishers. All those publishers would need to do is sign up with Vidy and allow it to index their pages, as well as provide their own keywords and user data. Through their dashboards, they will have full control over the ads, or vidys, they allow.
Visitors on the publishers' pages will see small video links called Vidylinks embedded in the text. They can hold down the mouse button to watch the embedded videos and unlock payouts. Those will take the form of VidyCoin rewards being taken from the advertiser's allocated campaign budget and distributed between the watcher, the publisher, the miners, the platform and a pool of coins dedicated to ten charities selected by the Vidy Foundation (or later, possibly by its community). The largest cut of the profits will go to the publishers. Platinum advertisers will also be able to offer one-tap purchases of products connected to their videos in the same spot, paid for with VidyCoins.
What gives Vidy an edge?
The proposal is both very idealistic, aimed at creating a cleaner, better Internet, and extremely practical. The potential of machine learning for advertising has already been widely acknowledged, and combined with NLP it should allow for a much more effective and relevant ad allocation. Those same methods can be used to deal with many possible problems, including inappropriate content or bots. Its incentive system is ingeniously designed, giving publishers an easy alternative revenue stream and users a new reason to not just ignore all ads.
Vidy was developed by a long-standing team of veteran software engineers. Their design is completely open-source and exhaustively documented, and the company has pledged to provide SDKs for publishers to easily integrate their system. Vidy already has the interest of major companies, business figures from different industries and popular entertainers, as well as that of online media firms willing to offer their services as publishers.
Token sale details
A new paradigm for the online economy
Embedding videos within text may seem like a comparatively minor breakthrough, and neither machine learning nor blockchain technology are unprecedented in advertising. Taken together and implemented on such a high level as Vidy appears to promise, though, they may turn out to be a real game changer. By redefining online ads and altering the revenue streams, Vidy might be able to reshape the online economy.
Will it succeed? That will largely depend on the execution. Vidy's technical documentation and market research is certainly impressive, but in practice, such an experimental model can run into any number of unexpected problems. Can they be sure that their new-style videos will not eventually wear on Internet users just as much as the current pop-ups? However, the benefit of a neural network is that it will adapt and improve over time. If it is given the chance, and some influential stakeholders appear willing to do so, then Vidy and its model may eventually the displace the one that exists now.
Links:
Website: https://vidy.com/
WhitePaper: https://bit.ly/2wp7Uu1
Telegram: https://t.me/vidycoin
Facebook: https://facebook.com/vidycoin
Twitter: https://twitter.com/vidycoin
Medium: https://medium.com/@vidycoin
ANN: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4607821.0
Author: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=980049
Disclaimer
This review by Bonanza Kreep is all opinion and analysis, not investment advice.