#ntent

We are pleased to welcome Dr. Ricardo Baeza-Yates to the NTENT Team! Ricardo will play a key role in fortifying NTENT’s innovation leadership in semantic and natural language processing and in shaping the company’s technology vision. Get to know a little more about him.

1. You have significant experience in the search space; can you please tell us a little bit about your background?

I did my PhD at Univ. of Waterloo on search algorithms related to the New Oxford English Dictionary project. At that time, the dictionary was the largest single file on the planet (a bit more than 500Mb) and searching through it was a challenge. Later, the Web appeared and it was natural to apply my expertise to Web search, where the challenge was even larger as there were million of websites with terabytes of data.

To get search usage data, I even started my own search engine for all of the Chilean Web in 2000 that lasted 15 years. This expertise triggered the proposal to Yahoo Labs to start a new European lab in 2006 in Barcelona. In 2014, I moved to the USA as VP of Research at Yahoo! and in 2015, I became Chief Research Scientist. During all these years, I kept doing research in search, particularly query mining and distributed web search.

2. What inspired you to join NTENT?

NTENT is a search company and hence, was a perfect match for my expertise, which is also complementary to the great semantic expertise that the company already has. I also found the team inspiring and each day I connect with more nice people. Thus, each day I am more motivated, reinforcing my belief that it was a great decision to join NTENT.

3. What would you say is the main thing that makes NTENT different from other players in semantic search and natural language processing?

Clearly, it is the semantic layer and understanding the need behind a person's query. All search engines are trying to exploit a semantic angle, but I believe NTENT semantic technology can be the difference in the future of mobile search, vertical search and search in general.

4. How do you think semantic and natural language technologies are disrupting the world we live in?

With the rise of big data and (deep) machine learning, one of the main applications is natural language understanding. That implies improving very difficult problems such as text translation or summarization. Semantic understanding is the next challenge, from concepts to metaphors and ironies. These can transform how we communicate with machines from chat bots to voice commands, impacting all aspects of our lives.

5. Any fun or little known facts you would care to share about yourself? (Rumor has it from the team in CA that you’re a wicked ping pong player.)

I love maps and geography, in particular applied geography, so accordingly I have visited 77 countries. As a corollary, I love to try new things, particularly food and wine, and to take photographs that capture the diversity of people, animals, plants, and places. I also enjoy playing tennis, ping pong and foosball.

Welcome aboard Ricardo!

BMW i3 – "Newfangled Idea"

Invisible Mindy Kaling – Nationwide Super Bowl XLIX Ad Teaser

We live in a world where machines make big decisions. Algorithmic systems execute a majority of stock trades and even predict significant world events. It should come as no surprise that data science is also automating the buying of supply side inventory for online advertising, and it’s gaining a sizable foothold.

The industry refers to the automated purchasing of online advertising media as “programmatic buying.” It now accounts for 20% of all digital advertising spend, according to Interactive Advertising Bureau research.

As search continues to be a prominent feature of social networks and mobile devices, advertisers are expected to tailor their campaigns to accommodate for search in new ways: innovative mobile advertising formats, apps that deliver information in new ways, and search engines that evolve into “answer engines.” 

NTENT recently announced its acquisition of the demand-side platform (DSP) addGloo, further adding to NTENT’s position as the leading semantic technology company. With this acquisition, NTENT will continue to lead the way in the online advertising marketplace of integrated search and contextual targeting.

AddGloo focuses on integrating real-time semantic analysis with real-time bidding (RTB) for online display advertising. This technology allows search marketers and display advertisers to target and bid on display ad inventory using keywords, phrases, subjects, and sentiment across the web, as well as mobile and video.

With this acquisition, advertisers will have the ability to maximize their ROI and give them a more efficient way to purchase, execute, and optimize online campaigns with greater relevance and scale via real time bidding. Customers will no longer have to worry about their ads being aligned with content that is irrelevant. This also gives businesses the ability to integrate search with their display campaigns

Utilizing our semantic search technology in combination with addGloo introduces a new approach to targeting online content with superior quality, brand safety, optimizations, and transparency. This highly innovative advertising solution brings new opportunities to NTENT and their customers. To learn more about NTENT’s acquisition of addGloo, see our press release on Businesswire!

Semantic technology is a term we have all heard, but does anyone really know what it means? It’s heralded by the likes of Google and Facebook, but as marketers or even end users, how does it impact the way we interact with content on the web? 

By: Donna Young, Director of Social Media

There were countless predictions that this was to be the most social Super Bowl (#SB48) ever. Twitter’s records were broken, but not by much, surprisingly. There were 24.9 million tweets sent versus 24.1 from last year’s game. Facebook’s reported stats were staggering—more than 50 million unique people joined the conversation to chat about the game, with a total of approximately 185 million interactions, which included posts, comments and “likes” related to Super Bowl.

Savvy advertising brands, believing social media would garner a larger audience, started early, releasing a record number of pre-game videos on social channels. Their proactive efforts paid off. Some advertisers had as much as six times their average daily number of social mentions, on Super Bowl Sunday (Adobe). It didn't hurt that after halftime, fans’ attention shifted even further toward social media channels, which, in turn, fed these statistics—perhaps due to the Seahawk’s dominance in the game.

Twitter and Facebook, being the most popular platforms, were heavily utilized, but Vine, definitely made its presence known this year during the game. It was interesting to see the number of brands getting very creative by using Twitter’s flirty, yet effective six-second short video platform as a medium to promote their products or services. 

One brand in particular, Tide, had a very Vine-centric campaign, which had close to twenty short videos, each one playing off other brands’ Super Bowl ads.

Priceline also tapped into Vine, their riff making “express” versions of other brands’ commercials plays of the game, and the halftime show, done with sock puppets.

The creativity shown in short video formats such as Vine and Instagram video will only inspire brands to push the creative boundaries of the medium further—expect to see them play a larger marketing role in other events such as the next Super Bowl and Olympics.

Now that the numbers are in for the Super Bowl, there’s no doubt social media is a tour de force, and that brands taking advantage of multi-platforms, creatively combined with their TV buy, will reap the rewards of a well-engaged audience.

By: Kerstin Recker, VP of Marketing 

As football fans across the country gear up for Super Bowl 2014, advertisers have been busy releasing ad teasers online. In fact, YouTube has already attracted 44 million views, up from 20 million at this time last year. Online video and social are playing a starring role as advertisers, large and small, recognize the need to move beyond TV to reach consumers on a massive scale and entice them to engage with their brand. “What advertisers have realized is that Super Bowl advertising doesn’t just take place on TV, with your 30-second or 60-second spot that you paid millions of dollars for,” said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst for research firm eMarketer. “You really need to have a broader presence.”

Which advertisers have the viewership advantage going into the game? Sodastream, Doritos, M&M, Butterfinger, Alex and Ani, Intuit, Volkswagon and Dannon Oikos Super Bowl ads have the highest YouTube views so far. Take a glance at some of the best pre game ads that have been released. 

Tim Tebow’s T-Mobile Super Bowl Spot

Alex and Ani –Local Super Bowl Ad

2014 Volkswagen Game Day Commercial: Wings

Budweiser’s “Coming Home” Ad

M&M’S Super Bowl Commercial 2014

Bud Light “Don” Super Bowl XLVIII Teaser

Intuit’s Spotlight on Small Business Super Bowl contest!

Budweiser Super Bowl XLVIII Commercial — “Puppy Love”

Dannon Oikos Greek Yogurt Super Bowl Commercial 2014 Full House Reunion “The Spill

KIA’s Matrix-Inspired 2014 Super Bowl Commercial

Butterfinger Super Bowl 2014 teaser

Also take a look at the article Did Online Video Steal the Super Bowl Show?