Advanced Television: ITV Upgrades ACT Tool to Identify Emotions

ITV is launching a newly upgraded development of its Automated Contextual Targeting (ACT) tool, through a partnership with search intelligence platform Captify. ITV will use Captify’s advanced contextual classification technology to identify certain types of moments, themes and emotions during ITV programmes for advertiser targeting.

Developed by ITV’s AdLabs, this next stage of ACT is launching with the DHSC Every Mind Matters campaign, via OmniGOV and Wavemaker, to coincide with World Mental Health Day. For this campaign ACT will be used to identify emotional moments in ITVX shows that are uplifting or joyful, to find audiences who are more likely to be feeling anxious or stressed and direct viewers to the Every Mind Matters online portal.

Launched last year in beta, ACT uses AI technology to scan every ITVX show, categorising every scene in them by moment, theme or emotion. In this new version of ACT, ITV is using Captify’s natural language processing and machine learning models to extract precise meaning from ITV programme subtitle data. The partnership enables a rapid scaling of the solution, with many more segments available on a self-service basis in Planet V.

In addition, ITV is using ACT for the scheduling of Britain Get Talking campaign, which calls on every school in the country to set a different kind of homework and encourages young people to have a proper chat with an adult they trust about the hardest subject on their minds.

Louise Turpin, Head of Client & Implementational Planning, OmniGOV, said: “OmniGOV are delighted to be partnering with ITV, DHSC EMM and Wavemaker on the launch of ITV’s new ACT tool. It has enabled us to tap into the core audience behaviours and deliver a timely, supportive message to those on their own mental health journey. ITV AdLabs have been supportive at each step across planning, implementation, and evaluation key as we look to showcase how innovations such as these can support OmniGOV and HM Government in providing outcomes that truly matter.”

Jayesh Rajdev, Controller of Advanced Advertising, ITV, commented: “Our partnership with Captify will help advertisers get closer to moments that matter in ITVX shows with even greater scale and precision, and I’m thrilled DHSC are our launch advertiser with this important and timely campaign. Using ACT to improve resonance for mental health advertising highlights how the power of TV advertising can be used for good and makes sure that advertisers benefit.”

Amelia Waddington, Chief Product Officer, Captify, added: “We have built Captify’s business on our ability to develop technology that understands natural language and turns it into intelligence. Bringing that ability to television through ITV’s massive content catalogue and ad platform will bring a huge boost of scale and effectiveness for ITV advertisers.”