Ads Based Upon Image Content

This morning my dad emailed me a link to an article from MIT’s Technology Review website.

In this article it talks about a new adserver that Qiang Yang at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology created. Basically, this adserver effectively “reads” web image content and serves related advertisements.

So even if I described this photo as, “this is how I look in the morning” this ad server would be able to detect that ACTUALLY this image is of a green eyed tree frog and serve ads relating to it in some shape or form. A petco ad for example. Or… My blog about frogs. (Oh wait, no, Google hates blogs).

This has been a huge challenge in the past, especially when images were uploaded with no tags or description like most people do… In fact, even with the addition of tags and a description, the chances that they are actually relevant to the images content is low.

The question that is interesting to me is how far this ad server can go. Beyond objects, can it detect in photo text? I think it would be amazing if you had uploaded a XKCD comic for example, and the ad server was able to determine the text and serve relevant content because of it.

I think if sites like Myspace, Facebook, and photo uploading sites utilize this technology, it could open up a whole new realm of targeted advertising.

I can’t wait to see how targeted ads become in 10 years.

[Img Credit]