Little Black Book and Comcast Technology Solutions Launch AI Powered Search at Cannes Lions 2024

Today, Little Black Book and Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS) announce the launch of an AI-powered integration with the potential to transform the way the advertising and marketing industries can work. The two businesses are inviting industry leaders to the LBB & Friends Beach at Cannes Lions for sneak previews of the technology between 17th - 21st June. 

Comcast Technology Solutions’ VideoAI™ will enable the integration of AI and machine learning to video content in the LBB Creative Library. This will provide a plethora of new search and reel-building capabilities for the entire advertising industry.

LBB has the fastest growing free-to-view advertising archive in the world. It has spent the last two years tagging and linking millions of credits to allow the work on LBB to be searched not only by company, location, genre and category but by every single person credited on work, making it akin to an IMDb of advertising. The application of CTS VideoAI™ to deliver enhanced search capabilities will take this to a whole new level.

CEO and founder of LBB, Matt Cooper comments, “Comcast Technology Solutions is now a long-term partner of LBB who we have worked with in many interesting ways. This next stage of our partnership brings the power of VideoAI™ to the LBB Creative Library making content searchable in a way no other public creative library is.’’

VideoAI™ revolutionises LBB Creative Library, unlocking the power of semantic search. By automatically analysing visuals, text, emotions, and sentiment, it enables precise searches across a variety of search criteria. Advertisers and content providers can now easily pinpoint specific frames, concepts, scenes, and elements – even when those elements aren't explicitly tagged or described.

In layman’s terms, marketers, creatives, producers, filmmakers, VFX artists, sound designers and more will be able to leverage video in the LBB Creative Library in a completely new way. It will allow users to build storyboards or Collections (reels) based on any search they want, in real-time. For example, users could search ‘advert with a car on a mountain,’ or ‘short films with happy people in red t-shirts’. VideoAI™ will return the videos that fit the brief. Launching with a significant portion of the creative library, this ground breaking feature marks a major step forward in our ongoing commitment to innovation. We're eager to see how this technology is utilised and will be evaluating its potential for broader application within the LBB archive.

Matt adds, “To me one of the most beautiful things about this technology is the speed at which it returns results. By the time your video is in the system and transcoded, it will be available for semantic search. I have worked in archives/DAMS for 25 years now and I can tell you this is going to be crazy useful. This feature will be available to the entire LBB community and any visitor to the site. If I was a brand or agency with a system full of assets, I’d be looking at working this way too. It just makes sense. And the beauty of this is that it can be processed at scale, meaning your old assets can be cleaned, fixed and searchable in no time at all. It can potentially search for emotions, celebrities, subtitles and also our metadata too. Just imagine the time this can save a creative or brand or director in looking at scenes for pitches or treatments. Why wouldn’t you want this capability for your own archive of running footage, dailies, b-rolls etc.?”

Simon Morris, head of enterprise partnerships and business development from Comcast Technology Solutions says, “I'm thrilled to partner with Matt and the Little Black Book team on this integration. Their dedication to creators, producers, and the ad community is unparalleled. Contributing a powerful search enhancement to the LBB Creative Library is a privilege. Semantic search is a game-changer, transforming how we interact with large content archives. It's not just about finding a needle in a haystack; it's about understanding the entire tapestry.” 

To enquire about a demo while in Cannes, register your interest here.