How to resolve AdBlock issue? Finbar O'Hanlon's ION technology powers video creativity at scale
By Leon Gettler, Talking Business >>
IMAGINE A WORLD where every video placed on YouTube could be hyper-personalised … Imagine a company that can take each datapoint on every video and segment it – like Lego blocks.
That’s what ION Video, an Australian-created ASX-listed company, is offering. It is a patented technology that could, for example, tailor video presentations to cater for individual interests and tastes – at scale.
It can do so at very low cost because new video is not being shot – instead a video archive is effectively being repurposed and rescripted.
Re-framing what video and audio can do
Finbar O’Hanlon, ION’s founder and head of innovation, said ION Video built and founded the system for a world that allows artificial intelligence (AI) to conduct and be the producer for content in a new generation.
He said AI is “a great opportunity” for ION. 
“Look back at the last five years and how fast the world has moved. With 80% of the world traffic being video, you know what hasn’t evolved? The format and the medium of video,” Mr O’Hanlon told Talking Business.
“AI is an incredible opportunity because we’ve built the framework, the blueprints of the video file from the ground up.
“AI is the fundamental backbone of why this technology is valuable, as we move into this new world.”
Pixels and data become controllable building blocks
Mr O’Hanlon said ION allows AI to treat video ‘like text’.
“So each individual picture, that might be 50 pictures per second, that as they’re going in sequence turn into a video. We allow AI to address every frame at a 50th of a second and re-organise it like text,” he said.
“What that means, without being super technical, is that video can now be treated like text and it can re-purposed and reproduced for an audience of one.
“The world has changed now to where everyone is expecting the world to revolve around them – and it’s impossible for video to be generated for every person on the planet. It’s too costly, it’s too slow.
“When AI can produce and construct content at the frame level, like it does text, it means everyone in the world can have their own education, their own newsfeeds, their own cooking shows.
“All that content can now be delivered in seconds for every person on the planet.
“Think about a Lego model that’s been glued together. AI can tell the video to be built from different bricks and different combinations – and that’s where ION sits.
“We allow AI to talk at the brick level.”
ION Video creates new commercial opportunities
Anthony Baker, ION Video’s chief executive officer, said the business was now in commercial discussions with more than 20 companies across technology, telecommunications media, enterprise infrastructure and government sectors.
The key aim of the business here, he said, was to license the firm’s intellectual property (IP) to these companies.
The contracts will comprise an integration fee, an annual licensing fee and the enablement factor which will be a percentage of the benefit that the infrastructure brings to that company.
This could be well in excess of a million dollars for each ‘proof of concept’ that ION is now working on. The contracts thereafter are likely to be significantly more than that.
ION is now talking to companies that are goliaths in their sectors. One of the companies ION is in advance talks with is one of the largest in the world.
“We are now in talks with a multinational entertainment company, two global telecommunications organisations and one of the largest, by market capitalisation, technology companies in the world,” Mr Baker said.
Hear the complete interview and catch up with other topical business news on Leon Gettler’s Talking Business podcast, released every Friday at www.acast.com/talkingbusiness
ends