The Need for Video Analytics

By CIOReview | Monday, May 8, 2017

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From merely being another form of entertainment to a key asset in numerous business processes, the role of video has undergone a sea change. Nowadays, video simplifies a gamut of tasks that range from surveillance to customer engagement. In accordance with the circumstances, businesses and individuals have been capturing videos for numerous reasons. A bevy of CCTV cameras is swarming industrial premises to put every activity under vigil. From the marketing perspective, 300 hours of video is being uploaded to YouTube every minute for promoting product or service, and social media platforms are joining frenzy to adapt a mechanism that would ease video broadcasting. The obvious corollary is the generation of videos in unprecedented manner. This scenario gives us an idea of data that needs to be analyzed to discern the customer sentiment and intent. As per the researchers, a high-definition video footage of one second is equivalent to 2000 pages of text. Complexity in analyzing the videos grows due sheer large amount of data.

Relying on manual approach—which is cumbersome and capital heavy—has proved to be ineffective in gleaning relevant information from videos. Of late, the companies have woken up to the futility of these conventional methods of video analysis. In sync with the business requirements, enterprises are looking forward to automate the video analysis and inject the power of new age technologies. How enterprises can apply analytical tools to the video content and unlock business opportunities? The answers lead us to new insights.

Video analytics and opening of new business opportunities

Today, camera installation in industrial and commercial establishments is basically used for monitoring the activities of employees and customers. However, with the help of video analytics, the enterprises can discern the activities on numerous parameters. For example, an analysis of video footage from check out section if clubbed with behavioral patterns will enable a retail outlet to understand the customer experience. In addition to the key factor, the business may learn a customer’s intent by coalescing the data with the feedback given by the customer at POS terminal. The retailer can understand the preferences of customers based on their age and gender and group the likes and dislikes. The analysis may help in improving numerous processes like product placement and inventory management. An analysis of YouTube video needs a deeper thought process as it reaches a larger audience with minimum barriers. Thus integrating analysis of video content with the response received opens up a new door for the enterprises and analysts.

Analysts can adhere to different approaches while analyzing the video content, the real time analysis and historical analysis. According to the business needs, businesses can apply the methodologies of video analysis. For surveillance, real time video analysis is an apt strategy whereas for in-depth study of customer behavior for drawing product marketing plan, historical analysis is a right choice.

Using technologies like big data, analytics, and automation, companies can expedite the process of video analysis. These technologies liberate the businesses from the reliance on error-prone human efforts. By automating video indexing, videos can be indexed, searched faster, and undertaken for further study with ease. Again, the analysis of videos can be done locally or in the cloud according to the business needs of a company. The cloud-based video analysis offers businesses scalability and ease of processing the video content. Analyzing videos locally ensure real time analysis without the need to rely on the network availability for transferring the video to the cloud. However, local analysis becomes a costly affair in tandem with growth in the size of the video.