Artificial Intelligence for Digital Media: Exclusive Interview with WowYow Co-Founder and CMO Jarett Boskovich

Jarett Boskovich is the CMO and co-founder of WowYow, a Visual Artificial Intelligence Technology for Digital Media. Jarett will be discussing the WowYow project with us in this interview.
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By Angela Scott-Briggs, Tech Bullion

Published June 4, 2019

Jarett Boskovich is the CMO and co-founder of WowYow, a Visual Artificial Intelligence Technology for Digital Media. Jarett will be discussing the WowYow project with us in this interview.

What is WowYow?

WowYow is a Visual AI company using advanced AI technology to automatically identify, index, search and monetize visual content 500x more effectively than anything currently on the market.

There are 3.8B text searches each day, yet no way to answer the questions that people have when watching videos or looking at an image. WowYow answers those questions by indexing the context of the content, allowing users to search and shop everything they see.

By adding one line of code to a publisher’s site(s) and app(s), WowYow automatically analyzes every video and image regardless of file or video player type and creates new and unique data points for each content piece. With the creation of new metadata, WowYow is able to instantly unlock the content’s previously untapped searchability, marketability and profitability. It is easy to deploy, seamless, and offers feature-rich capabilities which connects users to answers, consumers to brands, and provides an entirely new revenue stream for publishers.

What services and solutions do you provide with WowYow?

There are three main problems that WowYow is addressing:

  1. A search problem: there is no way to answer questions that audiences have during the content viewing experience.  
  2. An indexing problem: users and companies can only search videos/images by title or manually tagged keywords.
  3. An advertising problem: current monetization is limited, intrusive and irrelevant.

WowYow is solving these problems with its proprietary AI technology that automatically identifies, indexes, searches, and monetizes everything seen within video and images.

And here’s the Data to back it up:

1) WowYow’s search solution:

Viewers across WowYow’s network of publishers continue to search and shop publisher content. Across our network of publishers WowYow has an 8.5% engagement rate.

2) WowYow’s indexing solution:

WowYow’s automated indexing averages up to 80 new & unique data points per 1 min of video.

3) WowYow’s advertising solution:

WowYow’s advertising method significantly increases the number of advertising opportunities per every content asset, providing a positive and more relevant ad experience, and adding instant ROI by earning an additional $2-8 ECPM (Effective Cost Per Mille) for our publisher partners. (WowYow’s monetization solutions do not disrupt or displace any current ad methods in place).

Tell us more about the AI technology behind WowYow; why AI?

WowYow’s proprietary AI technology combines these four key computer science fields:

  1. Computer Vision
  2. Artificial Intelligence
  3. Visual Search
  4. Visual Augmentation

To date WowYow has processed over 500,000 videos and indexed over 1M items.

Here is a deeper look into the WowYow technology stack that makes this possible:

Video Detection Engine

  • Deep-learning algorithm
  • Locates any/all video assets
  • Works with any video player

Processing Engine

  • Instant object recognition
  • Identifies and tracks people, places, products, text & more

Inventory Generator

  • Works automatically
  • Creates and catalogues all items found in video

WowYow’s Visual AI allows advertisers to integrate their brand where viewers are already looking. What are the benefits and how does it work?

WowYow’s visual marketplace identifies and catalogs new visual ad inventory from publisher video/image content, opening up new opportunities for brands to connect with their target consumers. Now every person, product, place, text, and more within native publisher videos/images are available as a demand source.

Brands can purchase new inventory that spans images/video, publisher verticals, and various platforms, in real time and at a fraction of the cost! WowYow does this by scanning and indexing all visual elements (products, services, locations, text, etc.) in video and images. This enables advertisers to better leverage their media buys across an entire network of publishers – which means more effective, streamlined buying strategies and a substantially greater ROI for advertisers.

Simply put, WowYow has created an entirely new way of leveraging viewer attention to help advertisers connect with consumers during every phase of the buyer journey.

Awareness: When a user sees anything within an image or video they want to search or shop they now have the ability to.

“According to eMarketer, 75 percent of U.S. internet users regularly or always search for visual content before making a purchase”.

Consideration: WowYow drives content to commerce. One click from content and you are taken to a brand’s website to learn about or shop your interest.

Decision: Visual content and video is proven to increase the likelihood of conversion.

“In fact, studies show that visual search leads to checkout twice as quickly as text-based search.”

What is the market size and level of demand for video content publishing and advertising and how is WowYow filling this market?

WowYow’s entry into the marketplace comes at a time of huge potential to disrupt the digital marketing space. Grand View Research projects that the global image recognition market will reach a value of $77.69B by 2025, and Cisco projects that 82% of internet traffic will be video traffic by 2022. In 2017, banner, video and search ads totaled over $80B, and by 2020, digital ad spend is projected to reach $335B. WowYow’s goal is to capture 1-2% of that market share.

Any success stories you will like to share with us from WowYow, what is next on your roadmap?

Success Stories:

WowYow’s technology has been validated countless times with data derived from our network of publishers and advertisers. WowYow’s click-through-rate increased 27% from 2017-2018 (from 6.7% to 8.5%) which is vastly superior to average click-through-rates for banner and pre-roll ads (0.001% and 0.8%, respectively).

Case Study:

One specific example is with LatinoAthlete.com, a Sports Content & Community-Based Platform for multicultural audiences, which is using WowYow’s innovative visual based (video and images) ad formats to drive engagement and conversions.

For example, in this 37 second video alone, WowYow’s AI technology identified and indexed 35 new ad inventory opportunities. https://www.latinoathlete.tv/watch/U6VMZqvvRtxlIzJ

For Latino Athlete to monetize that on its own, it would need to have dedicated staff spending time manually creating and linking each of the 35 opportunities. With WowYow, Latino Athlete is able to automatically monetize video with affiliate linking — without requiring extra staff and added costs.

Roadmap:

We’re excited about having a lot on our roadmap!

With OTT representing around 14 or 15 percent of an average consumer’s video diet, but under 5 percent of ad spend, we believe WowYow is aligned to capitalize on this upward trend and provide real value for the industry.

For the industry as a whole, we have a chance to push ad experiences in a new direction and not rely on old TV methods of only using demographics for ad serving. From using deep video metadata about the content itself to better serve targeted ads during commercial breaks to using our Visual Search User interfaces to provide viewers with new ad experiences – like shopping the looks, getting more information about what they just saw on the screen, and more.

And although WowYow started out in the digital media space to identify visual elements in online video, we are growth minded. Our AI Technology is designed to be scalable, and the long-term vision is to extend our functionality for use with a variety of visual mediums, including: Augmented reality, Television, Gaming consoles, and Virtual reality.

Could you tell us about your team and customer support?

WowYow’s founding team is comprised of CEO Adam Boskovich, CMO Jarett Boskovich, and CSO Michael Ramirez.

WowYow is headquartered in San Diego with sales offices in New York and Atlanta and a satellite office in India. Our team has 8 full-time employees, 5 part-time, and an advisory board comprised of 7 distinguished media, technology and financial experts.

Do you have more information for our readers?

If you are a Publisher, Advertiser, or interested party who sees value in our technology and its use cases we would love to hear from you. Please connect with WowYow to explore potential opportunities.

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