There is not a single sector of business that hasn’t been hit by COVID-19 and the online advertising space is no exception. Brands and platforms started adding coronavirus related terms to their keyword block list. Even YouTube announced in February that it would stop monetizing coronavirus related video. A brand safety service found that the volume of content blocked because it was associated with coronavirus had increased by 80% in a week, because it contained terms like “coronavirus” or “covid 19.” This has surprisingly created a unique pricing opportunity for advertisers. But taking advantage of this has proven difficult and requires a lot of work. This is because the sentiment analysis tools available in the market are not sophisticated enough to determine whether a story is something a brand would want to avoid, say, like rising death tolls, versus something neutral such as listing ways to protect yourself from contracting coronavirus. Some companies are using content written in China to train their software but at this point, it is a binary output: yes the article is about coronavirus or no it is not. For some advertisers, however, this is plenty to go on.
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