ADAPT scoops Technology Ireland Award for disruptive advertising system

Posted on: 27 November 2018

The ADAPT Centre at Trinity College Dublin has scooped an award for an advert creation system that has the potential to transform the advertising industry and provide a personalised user-experience for all consumers.

The digital content technology centre, an SFI Research Centre, was named winner of the ‘Outstanding Academic Achievement of the Year’ category at the 26th Annual Technology Ireland Industry Awards this weekend (Friday 23rd November), beating competition from Lero at NUI Galway, FallDeFi and Lero and DCU’s Usage Analytics.

Representatives from ADAPT receive their award.

ADAPT’s research created a system that enables automatic in-scene detection and placement of advertisements in videos. The collaborative research project was undertaken with Huawei Ireland, who will look to integrate it into its consumer offerings.

Commenting on the win, Professor Vincent Wade, Director of the ADAPT Centre, said:

We are delighted to receive this award in recognition of the innovative research taking place within ADAPT. Our collaborations with industry provide us with the opportunity to make a real difference in society by developing cutting-edge digital content tools and systems that can transform how we communicate, work and socialise. We are grateful to Huawei for their support.

The novel technology enables “retroactive” product placement and the possibility to deploy highly personalised ads.

Speaking about the innovation, Professor François Pitie of the ADAPT Centre, said:

We developed an AI-powered online advert creation system for next-generation video monetisation. This online system can automatically detect existing billboards in a video, and seamlessly replace those advertisements with new ones. We believe that diversifying our developed system to different domains could completely transform the advertisement industry, and provide a personalised user-experience for all consumers.

Over 80 of Ireland’s leading software and digital technology firms entered this year’s awards and the winners were announced at an event on Friday in Dublin, which was attended by 450 company leaders and national stakeholders from Irish technology companies.