Gurgaon firm uses AI to tell brands when you aren't paying attention to ads

The next time you watch a video advertisement on your mobile phone, there may be more than meets the eye. A Gurgaon-based over-the-top (OTT) platform claims to have come up with a way to instantly find out what the audience thinks of an advertisement.

Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, VuLiv Player has devised a technology to detect the slightest eye movement while a viewer is watching a video advertisement. It can tell which part of the advertisement was actually viewed - not just played - and when the person lost interest. 

“EyeVu combined with AI and big data can unearth human science data to build right creative content, be it for advertising or entertainment,” said Manoj Kumar Gupta, founder and chief executive officer of VuLiv Player. 

Gupta said the AI configuration analyses human eye movement across a set of angles to create an algorithm which calculates the exact number of seconds or video frames during which a consumer's attention was lost or regined. 

"This eliminates the problems of misleading data on consumer’s viewing patterns and combats fraud in digital advertising," he said.

The feedback process is typically tedious and involves surveys and other methods.

In addition, the technology can also help marketers tell the stories better. Gupta said markets can rework the content frame-by-frame based on the data generated. They can create video testing samples  to gauge how the audience has reacted by exposing them to different edits under controlled conditions.

For a consumer, VuLiv works just like most media players. It allows users to play content like music and photos from their smartphones as well as view content from YouTube and other websites on a single platform. Theoretically, analysing eye movement would require users to authorise their camera to be used by the app.

Gupta founded VuLiv Player in 2015. Before that, he was vice-president of products at consumer electronics firm Micromax.

He claims the app has more than two million dowloads between its iOS and Android offerings.

According to market research firm eMarketer, mobile phones will account for more than half (around 62%) of overall spending on digital advertising, which is expected to touch $2.8 billion by 2020.