Adtech goes offline: SilverPush syncs ads with physical events in real-time

It's one of the firms chosen by the Congress for social media campaign

It’s IPL time and you are watching Virat Kohli bat on your TV screen. Later, when you browse the internet and you may see ads on the brand of shoes Kohli was wearing during the match or simply the various brands that he endorses. That's what SilverPush does, or at least one of its products — Parallels. 

Founded in 2012, the Gurugram-based start-up leverages the power of real-time TV and online videos to identify faces, logos, objects and even emotions to provide “contextual targeting” for brands to reach their target audience. Founder Hitesh Chawla claims SilverPush to be the world’s first company to be doing this kind of contextual advertising for videos.

The company recently raised $5 million in Series B funding from Japanese marketing company FreakOut. It has also been chosen by the Congress as one of the ad-tech companies for the party’s social media campaigning during the Lok Sabha election. 

Concept 

SilverPush has six products under its umbrella — Mirrors, Prism, Parallels, DSP, Hexa and Javelin — with Mirrors and Parallels being the most popular. Suppose you are watching an online video and a character happens to wear a Spiderman t-shirt in it. Mirrors will identify that and perhaps show you an ad for the upcoming Spiderman movie. 

The company also targets particular demography to sync offline events with online ads with timing being the crucial element. For instance, if it is raining in Delhi, the company might push ads for skid-free tyres on your desktop or smartphone. 

Does this mean SilverPush is tracking users? A disclaimer on its website reads: “We do not track any users directly or indirectly, and we totally respect user privacy.”

Hitesh Chawla, Founder, SilverPush

The disclaimer is significant because the company earlier used an ‘audio beacon model’ — if one was watching television and had the SilverPush app downloaded on their mobile, it would allow the company to know what was being watched through ultrasonic signals beyond the human hearing capability. This would let the company precisely determine a device's location. It soon drew the attention of the US Federal Trade Commission and in 2016, a warning letter was issued to developers refraining them from using this feature by SilverPush. To allay privacy issues, the company flipped its model and decided to synchronise between TV and digital mediums instead, abandoning the audio beacon model.

The company has its own product dashboard that tracks TV ads from across 200 channels. For digital activity, it extracts public data from social media and online search platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google, and seeks permission from relevant owners for private data. 

Opportunity

Besides India, the firm serves over 1,000 clients in South Africa, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, the UAE and Egypt, among others. Some of its clients include the likes of Unilever, Coca-Cola, Spotify, Swiggy, Ola, Nissan and Nestlé. 

It also filed a patent in December 2018 to authenticate that it could detect television ads across channels within 0.6-1 second against traditional detection period of at least seven seconds. 

Revenue 

Being a media buying platform, SilverPush follows an agency model where it buys media for its clients and optimises it at a cost per thousand impressions basis.  “We are growing 100 per cent year-on-year and for the past two years, and this year, too, we plan to achieve the same,” said Chawla. 

The company is reportedly targeting a revenue of $25 million in the next couple of years. 

Road ahead 

One of the challenges, the company anticipates, is competitors flooding the market by creating a similar product. However, the firm is optimistic that its “AI learning and detection will be so robust by then, that it will take a long time for competitors to match its accuracy.”

The firm plans to launch its product in the United States and the United Kingdom, while strengthening its presence in the international markets where it is already present.

Factbox

Founded: 2012

Area of biz:  Ad-tech firm 

Funding: $5 million in Series B 

Clients: Coca-Cola, Spotify, Ola and Swiggy, among others

Presence: 13 countries

Revenue growth: 100% YoY

A leading player in contextual advertising

Shrenik Gandhi, CEO, White Rivers Media

SilverPush's technology is brilliant. Being one of the foremost players in contextual video advertising, the company has made a good start and is on the right track. To give you an example, SilverPush has a mobile technology that allows it to pick up the audio of ads played on television. Based on the keywords it receives from the audio, it can push out ads on the mobile phone of the TV viewer (the company has now abandoned this tech, called audio beacon model).

The insight for this technology is based on research which shows that users normally get busy with their mobile phones during television ad breaks. So, if there is a certain ad of a brand playing on TV, its competitor can play its ad on the TV viewer's mobile phone to steal the former's thunder. Interesting, isn't it? This is one of the solutions provided by SilverPush. There are many more in its portfolio. Having said that, the space in which SilverPush operates is evolving. You have multiple screens that are coming up, consumers are also getting savvy. So the technology to target these users also needs to evolve.