Multimodal Content Analysis for Effective Advertisements on YouTube

The rapid advances in e-commerce and Web 2.0 technologies have greatly increased the impact of commercial advertisements on the general public. As a key enabling technology, a multitude of recommender systems exists which analyzes user features and browsing patterns to recommend appealing advertisements to users. In this work, we seek to study the characteristics or attributes that characterize an effective advertisement and recommend a useful set of features to aid the designing and production processes of commercial advertisements. We analyze the temporal patterns from multimedia content of advertisement videos including auditory, visual and textual components, and study their individual roles and synergies in the success of an advertisement. The objective of this work is then to measure the effectiveness of an advertisement, and to recommend a useful set of features to advertisement designers to make it more successful and approachable to users. Our proposed framework employs the signal processing technique of cross modality feature learning where data streams from different components are employed to train separate neural network models and are then fused together to learn a shared representation. Subsequently, a neural network model trained on this joint feature embedding representation is utilized as a classifier to predict advertisement effectiveness. We validate our approach using subjective ratings from a dedicated user study, the sentiment strength of online viewer comments, and a viewer opinion metric of the ratio of the Likes and Views received by each advertisement from an online platform.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, ICDM 201

'Friends', 'fans', and foes: Identity performance through responses to Facebook brand marketing

This thesis is an investigation of a relatively recently-emerging type of social media discourse, where individuals reply to marketing and advertising messages that appear within their Facebook news feeds. Unlike in consumer discourse such as product reviews, the primary purpose of this interaction appears to be social in nature, due in part to the brand posts’ contextualization within the social space of the news feed. This thesis is concerned with the ways that responders ‘use’ news feed marketing messages as opportunities for the performance of identity, and how this is achieved linguistically through discursive exchange and evaluative language. This research question is approached through a triangulated discourse analytic approach grounded in Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004/2014), with a particular focus on the interpersonal dimension of meaning. The corpus includes 18 brand posts, consisting of images, text, and hyperlinks, and 540 comment responses. The first analytical layer is an analysis of the context of the interaction, which consists of a multimodal generic analysis of the form and function of the brand posts, as well as a description of the communicative purposes of responders (Martin & Rose, 2003; 2008). The second stage of analysis is a consideration of identity performance through interactive discourse exchange, using Negotiation analysis (Eggins & Slade, 1997; Martin, 1992). Finally, the third and central layer of analysis employs Appraisal theory (Martin & White, 2005) to investigate performances of identity through evaluation of emotions, aesthetics, and ethics. While there is an increasingly large amount of quantitative research considering the use and effectiveness of this emerging advertising model, there is to date no qualitative linguistic research considering the role of identity in responses to brand messages. The present study addresses this gap in the literature, whilst also addressing methodological issues and suggesting adaptations for applying these linguistic frameworks to computer moderated communicatio

On the effects of English elements in German print advertisements

Diese Arbeit untersucht den Einfluss von englischen Elementen in deutschen Werbeanzeigen auf die Anmutung der Anzeige, die Bewertung des beworbenen Produkts sowie der beworbenen Marke und die Einschätzung der Zielgruppe. In einer quantitativen Onlinestudie wurden vier speziell entwickelte Werbeanzeigen, die sich nur hinsichtlich der Verwendung englischer Elemente unterschieden, von 297 Teilnehmern bewertet. Dabei zeigten sich nur in wenigen Fällen statistisch signifikante Unterschiede zwischen der Bewertung der deutschen Anzeigenversionen und der englisch-deutsch gemischten Anzeigenversionen. Da den Probanden jeweils nur eine Version der Anzeige gezeigt wurde und ihnen der linguistische Hintergrund der Untersuchung unbekannt war, spiegeln die Ergebnisse die Wirkung englischer Elemente in realen Kontaktsituationen wider. Dieser Werbewirkungsstudie ging eine Untersuchung der Sprachzuordung voraus, in der getestet wurde, welche Variablen einen Einfluss darauf haben, ob ein visuell präsentiertes Stimuluswort als Deutsch oder Englisch wahrgenommen wird. Als geeignete Prädiktoren erwiesen sich neben der etymologischen Herkunft des Wortes vor allem die Integration in das deutsche Lexikon (operationalisiert durch Konsultierung des Duden Universalwörterbuchs 7. Aufl.). Des Weiteren zeigte sich ein signifikanter Einfluss graphemischer Fremdheitsmarker auf die Sprachzuordnung der Lexeme. Dieser Einfluss konnte sowohl bei Wörtern englischen Ursprungs als auch bei Wörtern, die nicht-englischen Ursprungs waren (z.B. LINEAL, CREMIG), beobachtet werden und verdeutlicht die Wichtigkeit der visuellen Wortform für die Sprachzuordnung.This thesis studies the influence of English elements in German print advertisements on the emotional appeal of the advertisement, the evaluation of the advertised product and brand, and the evaluation of the implied target group. Four especially designed print advertisements, which only differed in their use of English elements, were evaluated by 297 participants in a quantitative online study. Only in a few cases statistically significant differences between the evaluation of the German advertisement versions and the English-German mixed advertisement versions were found. Since participants were only shown one version of the advertisement and because the linguistic background of the study was disguised, the results mirror the effects of English elements in actual contact situations. Prior to this research, a study on language decisions was conducted to test which variables influence whether a visually presented word is perceived as English or German. Next to the etymological origin of a word, especially the integration into the German lexicon (operationalised by consulting the Duden Universalwörterbuchs 7th ed.) proved to be a good predictor. Moreover, graphemic markers of foreignness significantly influenced to which language lexemes were assigned. This impact was witnessed for words of English origin as well as for words of non-English origin (e.g. LINEAL, CREMIG), which emphasises the importance of visual word form for language decisions

Utility and identity: an analysis of two rhetorical strategies in tv advertising

Abstract: Our starting point is the observation that television advertising sometimes attempts to persuade the viewer of the value of a product by showing how useful it will be to him in resolving a problem while, on other occasions, it does this by illustrating how it will help him to construct an identity which will be appreciated by himself and others (in this article, the convention of assuming that the communicator is female and the audience, male, will be followed). In accordance with the reason/tickle theory, the more the advertiser bases her strategy on the utility of the product, the closer her message will be to a prototypical reason ad. In contrast, the more she bases it on the capacity of the product to help the consumer to acquire a glamorous identity, the closer it will be to a prototypical tickle ad. In the first case, the advertisement is intended to address the viewer?s uncertainties directly, informing him efficiently about what is being sold to him and what use or savings it offers him. In the second case, meanwhile, the aim of the advertisement is to transmit the communicative intention of the advertiser and thus capture his attention. It will not, however, resolve the viewer?s uncertainties directly, but will rather base its relevance on its capacity to make him infer an array of weak implicatures which associate the product with a glamorous identity. This paper presents an in-depth analysis of nine advertisements, allowing us to describe in detail some specific cases which respond both to these two prototypes and to various points along the scale between them. The objectives are twofold: First, to offer the researcher a theory which allows him to make a thorough and rigorous analysis of the discursive nature of the television advertisement; and secondly, to use this theory to offer an explanation which responds to these characteristics of the above-mentioned strategies

The Multimodal Sentiment Analysis in Car Reviews (MuSe-CaR) Dataset: Collection, Insights and Improvements

Truly real-life data presents a strong, but exciting challenge for sentiment and emotion research. The high variety of possible `in-the-wild' properties makes large datasets such as these indispensable with respect to building robust machine learning models. A sufficient quantity of data covering a deep variety in the challenges of each modality to force the exploratory analysis of the interplay of all modalities has not yet been made available in this context. In this contribution, we present MuSe-CaR, a first of its kind multimodal dataset. The data is publicly available as it recently served as the testing bed for the 1st Multimodal Sentiment Analysis Challenge, and focused on the tasks of emotion, emotion-target engagement, and trustworthiness recognition by means of comprehensively integrating the audio-visual and language modalities. Furthermore, we give a thorough overview of the dataset in terms of collection and annotation, including annotation tiers not used in this year's MuSe 2020. In addition, for one of the sub-challenges - predicting the level of trustworthiness - no participant outperformed the baseline model, and so we propose a simple, but highly efficient Multi-Head-Attention network that exceeds using multimodal fusion the baseline by around 0.2 CCC (almost 50 % improvement).Comment: accepted versio

Android Malware detection using predictive analytics.

The growth of android applications is causing a threat and a serious issue towards Android’s security. The number of malware targeting the Android operating system is increasing daily. As a result, in recent days the traditional ways that are being used to detect malware are not able to defend alone against the rapid development of hackers attacking techniques and novel malware. This capstone project focuses on using predictive analytics toward detecting malware from the network traffic. In this capstone project, we aim to train and test our data to find the best machine learning model with the highest accuracy of detecting malware in the network traffic. Through a variety of machine learning algorithms and models, we focused on 5 models starting with the logistic regression that was successfully able to predict malware by 67%. Moving to the decision tree that was effectively able to predict malware by 69% which was exactly equal to the random forest prediction ability. The AdaBoost came about 84% exactness, and KNN came with the highest anticipation of 86% between all the models. This shows us the advantage of adopting predictive analytics in malware detection within the traditional approaches to build a strong and defendable Android operating system against malware

Aesthetics assessment of videos through visual descriptors and automatic polarity annotation

En un mundo en el que las nuevas tecnologías están cada vez más ligadas a la información multimedia, el desarrollo de herramientas que permitan manejar fácilmente este tipo de datos se ha convertido en una tarea imprescindible, que ha despertado el interés científico en los últimos años. De entre las líneas de investigación que han empezado a desarrollarse recientemente, el estudio de características subjetivas en material audiovisual a partir de datos objetivos es de especial interés por cuanto puede ser aplicado a sistemas de clasificación y de recomendación. Este documento presenta un trabajo de investigación centrado en el estudio de modelos que permitan predecir automáticamente la satisfacción o interés que despierta un vídeo, concretamente un anuncio publicitario de un coche, en los usuarios de YouTube que lo ven, a partir de los descriptores de bajo nivel del v ́ıdeo. Un aspecto novedoso de este trabajo es el planteamiento de una solución para este tipo de problemas basada en un procedimiento para obtener automáticamente el etiquetado de los vídeos mediante técnicas de aprendizaje no supervisado. Para ello, se ha adquirido un conjunto de anuncios de coches junto con los metadatos asociados a cada vídeo que proporcionan los usuarios y que ofrecen información referente a la satisfacción que perciben estos cuando los visualizan en YouTube. Estos metadatos han permitido diseñar tres estrategias de análisis cluster para anotar automáticamente los vídeos, utilizando cada una de ellas un conjunto de metadatos diferente, de acuerdo a la manera en que los mismos son proporcionados por los usuarios. Por otro lado, se ha extraído, mediante técnicas de procesamiento de imagen y vídeo, un conjunto descriptores visuales de cada vídeo para posteriormente entrenar un sistema de aprendizaje de máquina que ha permitido el estudio de la relevancia y utilidad de este conjunto de descriptores para predecir el valor estético de los vídeos percibido por los usuarios.Grado en Ingeniería de Sistemas Audiovisuale

Effective Celebrity Endorsers: What Are the Rhetorical Factors?

Celebrity endorsements are a common technique used in advertising. While many have studied this marketing tool and its effectiveness, a gap remains in the research regarding overall effectiveness in celebrity choice and advertisement composition in terms of rhetoric. Oftentimes, there is an assumption that celebrity endorsers hold the most power in creating purchase intentions, yet concepts related to rhetoric suggest that other elements play an active role in this as well. Consequently, this study adds to the conversation of celebrity endorsements by examining five beauty advertisements that utilize celebrity endorsements to better understand their overall visual rhetoric and, thus, how they persuade consumers. Links are made to persuasiveness in terms of identity, credibility, design, and branding. The findings suggest that effectiveness cannot just be associated with a single element; rather, it is a conglomeration of rhetorical appeals ”visual rhetoric, credibility/trust, and coherence. Implications are also discussed in terms of how pinpointing the agent in an advertisement can provide specialists in the field with the necessary tools to more effectively persuade consumers and better market their products

Emotional Experience and Advertising Effectiveness: on the use of EEG in marketing

This dissertation extends existing knowledge by elucidating two proposed aims of neuromarketing, using EEG. The first aim concerns offering additional insight into implicit processes (here, emotions). The second aim concerns contributing to predicting behavioral, market level, responses or ‘advertising effectiveness’

Language as purposeful: functional varieties of texts

This volume, "Language as Purposeful: Functional Varieties of Texts", is the third of the first three e-books of a new series entitled, "Functional Grammar Studies for Non-Native Speakers of English", which is contained within the superordinate: "Quaderni del Centro di Studi Linguistico-Culturali (CeSLiC)", a research center in the Department of Modern Foreign Languages of the University of Bologna. The series proposes a metalinguistic description of English grammar in a functional, socio-semiotic perspective and is proving to be an effective teaching/learning resource for improving English literacy in the L2 pedagogic setting. The principal ‘consumers’ of the series are the students of the English Language Studies Program (ELSP) in Bologna’s Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literature, for whom it provides the basic course-book in each of their three years of the first-level degree course. This third volume applies the descriptive model taught in the first two years to the analysis of diverse text-types, and thus at the same time seeks to empower students through an increasing awareness of the typical functions of the English language in a variety of concrete situational and cultural contexts