NAB Perspectives: Civolution’s Terpstra Leads Synchronous-Screen Charge

Since being launched half a decade ago, Civolution has largely been known for its content-identification and -protection services. However, over the past year, the company has used its watermarking and fingerprinting technology to become a pioneer in the synchronous-screen world with its SyncNow media-interaction technology.

This week at the NAB Show, Civolution is looking to take these efforts to the next level with a new dual-screen video ad platform based on its SyncNow technology.

“Media interaction, media intelligence, and media protection are our three core segments,” says CEO Alex Terpstra, “but it is definitely fair to say that most of the buzz about us right now involves the interactive element.”

SyncNow, which debuted at last year’s show, allows automatic identification and mobile-device synchronization with the TV channel being watched or content being played. The real-time interactivity automatically handles distribution delays and supports time-shifted viewing.

Now Civolution is looking to capitalize on the ad-based side of the synchronous screen by teaming up with DG on a dual-screen video-ad platform. With the platform, advertisers can trigger ads on second-screen companion devices based on live TV content, using SyncNow.

“It is great that we have this sync technology to make second screens sync up,” says Terpstra. “It is great to create those compelling user experiences and add more stickiness to the TV programming. But, at the end of the day, people need to make money on these platforms, and advertisements are the key source of revenue.  So we needed to create solutions to accomplish that.”

The platform leverages DG’s asset tagging and metadata, Civolution’s Automatic Content Recognition (ACR), and mobile-video-ad serving from MediaMind, a division of DG. Commercials broadcast by DG are automatically recognized in real time by Civolution’s SyncNow and tap into its extensive television-monitoring infrastructure.

“We already have this infrastructure in place where we monitor 1,700 TV channels throughout the world in real time with watermarking and fingerprint detection,” says Terpstra. “But the footprint of that network lends itself to this application because we know which ads are being broadcast on which TV channels already. We can deliver that data to the backend of the second-screen application to inform. We can then trigger contextual ads that relate to the main-screen ad.”

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