Enabling advertisers to choose between ‘fun,’ ‘heartfelt,’ ‘impassioned,’ and ‘empowering’

Rachel England

February 17, 2021

2 Min Read

Music video network Vevo has launched Moods, an AI-powered service that identifies the tone and emotion of music in order to help advertisers more effectively target their campaigns.

According to Vevo, advertisers that place their campaigns in “emotionally congruent environments,” such as a heartfelt playlist ahead of Mother’s Day, are more likely to create a positive and memorable ad experience for consumers.

“With Moods, we can not only curate Vevo programming to better match a person’s mood, but we can also directly ensure advertisers that their campaigns are more meaningful and impactful in the same way that we guarantee a high-quality, brand-safe environment,” said Kevin McGurn, president of sales and distribution at Vevo. “Therefore, it’s the logical step that we have synergy between the ad creative and the mood it evokes with the music video it surrounds.”

Less money for death metal

Vevo was founded in 2009 as a joint venture between three of the world’s largest record companies - Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and EMI – to monetize music videos hosted online.

Today, YouTube is its largest customer, but the network also woks with Apple TV and a multitude of TV and set-top box manufacturers.

To create Moods, Vevo collaborated with music data specialist Musixmatch to score and label videos based on the energy and tone of each song. A proprietary model built by Musixmatch assigned a mood to each video for easy, contextual targeting. Available Moods include ‘fun,’ ‘heartfelt,’ ‘impassioned,’ and ‘empowering,’ with additional Moods due to be rolled out in the coming months.

“Our moods affect everything that we do, including the content we consume and the ads we engage with. From joy to fear, sadness to hope, music videos have remained a constant source of comfort and soundtrack our everyday lives,” Eyal Golshani, Vevo’s senior director of data science, said.

“With our innovative data-based capabilities, Vevo can better understand our viewers, and their frame of mind while viewing, to deliver the best music video experience. Simultaneously, by developing new offerings like Moods, we continue to add value to artists and advertisers alike, helping them achieve their respective goals through data science.”

While Vevo did not share any data to back up its claims, the product certainly marks a notable development for the way advertisers are able to leverage AI in their campaigns.

A study from October 2020, for example, indicated that that while advertisers are getting better at generating an emotional response in viewers, this response tends to be negative. Given the power that music has to influence our emotions, Moodscould prove to be a useful weapon in an advertiser’s arsenal.

About the Author(s)

Rachel England

Freelance journalist Rachel England has covered all aspects of technology for more than a decade. She have a particular interest in sustainability-focused tech innovation, and has once attended a green business expo dressed as a recycling bin.

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