Amazon X-Ray on Steroids, “Background” Advertising & Buying Option
Near the beginning of the movie Spectre, there is a scene where Bond is fighting and then choking someone on a helicopter, super intense. Now while Bond choking someone is always top-notch and usually that’s where my focus would be, I found myself thinking “Hmm… that really is a dope suit he’s wearing. Who made it? Where can I get it?” Answer is Tom Ford and it can be purchased here.
I’m sure a lot of people go through similar thoughts while watching a TV show or movie, even while browsing through something like Instagram. It would be very handy if a viewer could get some info on an item they see on screen instantly, it would be even more handy if they could buy it with a few clicks, on the same screen. In my example it took me a few mins to google the suit info.
That’s where services like Amazon X-Ray has incredible potential.
Currently on a lot of TV shows and movies Amazon X-Ray provides you some information regarding scenes, cast, characters, music, trivia etc. They are timestamped, so you can pause a scene and see lots of information related to it on X-Ray. This is from a scene in Spectre.
All that is great, the information is there should anybody wants to see it, otherwise they stay hidden in the “background”. Very helpful.
Let’s take it a step further. This is another scene. Here Bond gets his new watch from Q.
You are thinking “Hmm cool watch”. Let’s say you would like some detail on the watch, maybe even a way to… buy it. Well now you have this (excuse my amateur photoshopping).
A simple info box showing you what the item is and a way to buy it, right there on the screen.
This makes perfect sense for a company like Amazon because it already has the item in its inventory. Why not try to make some money where the viewer is actively taking an action (searching) for something they like? Chances of a sale here are higher compared to traditional display ads. Viewer is already logged into Amazon, two-three clicks and boom, sale, resume movie.
FYI — I strongly believe in not disrupting a viewing experience. Let’s experiment more of moving away from display advertising to “background” advertising. Build great content, include great products in creative ways (not blatant product placements), viewers will notice.
But what if the viewers keep pausing to X-Ray, disrupting the viewing experience themselves? Well that’s… their… fault, I mean choice. Cue evil laugh.
How to Include Items on X-Ray
I’m not exactly sure how Amazon timestamps all these current info on X-Ray. Not as easy as this I bet. Maybe they are people taking info from IMDB and tagging them manually just for X-Ray. Seems like a lot of work but I don’t know how you do this accurately without it. Maybe there are some photo-tagging going on and then someone approving it.
For information such as items I think it would require a lot of manual tagging for now, in the future apply some photo-tagging and computer visioning. They have to be accurate.
- Tag as much as you can or items you think might grab viewers’ attention the most.
- Check to see where viewers are X-Raying to get signals on what to tag if not tagged already. Signals should help understand X-Raying and purchasing pattern of viewers. Also identify things like trending items.
- Map tags with items in inventory.
In X-Ray you can currently see a complete cast info if you want in a TV show or movie, you should be able to do the same with items, should you choose. Again they are just there in the “background”. Nobody bothering anyone.
Industry Standard Overlay
Movie studios want to make as much money as possible and selling merchandise is a core part of their business. So I believe there should be an industry standard overlay where they themselves include these info when they sell/license their TV shows and movies to Amazon, Netflix, iTunes etc. Studios should already have the data. With the standard then allowing a company like Amazon to map their inventory to the items for a seamless buying experience.
This will allow not only Amazon to sell more items but for studios to make more by selling more merchandise. Win-Win.
Maybe there is an opportunity for some startups to come in here, gather the data and create these overlays for all these content. And partner with the studios and companies like Amazon. Because this type of overlay should exist for all videos (and photos, think Instagram)— especially TV, Facebook, YouTube.
Update 7/13/18
Live TV and Real-time
I’m watching Wimbledon right not now. Nadal and Djokovic are playing. While the match looks like it’s going to be another great one my attention is on Nadal’s watch, Richard Mille. Wouldn’t it be great if I could just ask Alexa what kind of watch Nadal is wearing and have it figure it out using a combination of real-time computer-vision and published data?
That should be the ultimate vision for X-Ray.
