(Newswire.net — May 27, 2019) — YouTube has introduced a new tool known as the Bumper Machine that uses machine learning to automatically create 6-second video ads. The Bumper Machine will analyze ads that are up to 90-seconds in duration and create versions that are 6-seconds long from them.
The new tool is designed to help advertisers create more effective Bumper Ads – the 6-second ad format that YouTube added to its repertoire in 2016. According to Google, bumpers have proven to be both effective and efficient at driving brand awareness and ad recall.
It is expected that the Bumper Machine will make it easier and faster for advertisers to create bumper ads from their video assets. The tool will locate key elements that it considers important such as voiceover segments or close-ups of people and logos, and incorporate them in the ads it creates.
All of the ads that are created with the tool will dedicate the final 2 or 3 seconds to the call to action that will be based on the call to action in the original video.
Although the Bumper Machine is fully automated and does not require any human input to create ads, some human review is still expected to be present. The tool may even have a limit to the number of versions that are created, as according to Google’s Vice President of YouTube and Video Global Solutions, Debbie Weinstein, “You’ll get three or four executions, the best guesses that the machine is going to make.”
If that does end up being the case, it will fall to the person that reviews the three or four bumper ads that are created can decide which is best for the brand’s campaign. It will be possible to use all three, or tweak some of the ads with a video editor for PC before incorporating them into an advertising campaign.
While it is still unknown how advertisers will choose to leverage the Bumper Machine, Google expects it to cater to different advertisers of all shapes and sizes. It has posited that smaller advertisers may use it as a tool to quickly create 6-second ads, while larger agencies will be more likely look at it as a jumping-off point to provide inspiration or a quick mock-up.
At this time the Bumper Machine is still in alpha testing and is only available to a few select brands. Once it has completed its alpha test it will go through a beta test before being rolled out into general availability.
One of the brands that is part of the alpha test is Grubhub and it shared a demo of the results when it used the Bumper Machine to cut a 13-second ad to a 6-second bumper ad. As the tool heads into its beta test it is expected that more clips that are created with it will be shared and will provide a better idea of its potential.
Up until it is released the Bumper Machine may be subject to significant changes based on its alpha and beta tests.