By Aaron Souppouris, Source: Engadget

ashagif

As the music video starts, Avicii nonchalantly wanders into Stockholm’s Tele2 Arena. He strolls past the venue’s reception; a Grand Marnier poster gets some vital screen time. The bass drops. The crowd goes wild. For some reason, I feel like drinking.

Over the past few weeks, Avicii fans in the US have been unknowingly drawing an association between their favorite Swedish DJ’s proghouse hit “Lay me Down” and orange-flavored cognac. Everywhere else in the world, the brand is never seen — a plain wall lies in its place. It’s one of the first examples of a new kind of temporary product placement called “digital insertion.” Typically, product placement currently takes the form of a lingering product shot — like a Beats Pill speaker at the start of a Miley Cyrus video. With recent advances, companies can now use algorithms to digitally serve you unique product placements based on where you live, your age or your salary. It’s a creepy concept, but it could change advertising forever.

The Grand Marnier spot is the work of Mirriad, an agency that sells what it calls “advertising for the skip generation.” Mirriad uses highly complex analysis tools to map video clips, automatically discerning the best places to insert products, billboards and other adverts. The software it created tracks objects and backgrounds in each frame, creating an optical flow of how objects move from second to second and essentially mapping the video in 3D. This enables both planar tracking (for modifying flat surfaces like walls, computer screens or newspapers) and 3D tracking (for placing complex 3D objects into a moving scene).

 

 

Read the full article: Engadget