Generative AI Product Placement Startup Rembrand Raises $8M
Generative AI product placement startup Rembrand has raised $8 million in a seed funding round led by Greycroft and UTA.VC. Rembrand realistically embeds images into videos, allowing post-production sponsorship and product placement options, as seen in the demo video above.
Synthetic Product Placement
Rembrand’s funding was announced the same week as the startup’s beta platform launched. Rembrand employs generative AI to virtually insert objects into videos and attempt to make it appear as though the inserted object was there during filming. Movies and TV shows, along with online content and ads, could all incorporate or change the kinds of products in a scene. In product placement terms, creators could commit to sponsorships even after filming wraps. They could even edit published videos to swap out products as they acquire new sponsors. The images don’t have to be real-world objects, either. Synthetically generated images produced by MidJourney, OpenAI’s DALL-E, or its new 3D text-to-object tool Point-E could be added to the “real world” inside the video.
“Consumers are skipping ads at an alarming rate. IPG reports that up to 65% of commercials are skipped. Consumers don’t like interruptions, and advertisers are searching for a more effective way to get noticed in video. With the explosive growth of online video and streaming, the traditional model of selling advertising in video is ripe for disruption,” Rembrand CEO Omar Tawakol said. “Product placement is a fantastic way to break through the clutter and get your brand in front of consumers, but it’s a manual process that requires big budgets. We see an opportunity to enable scalable, post-production product placement that meets the needs of today’s creators.”
Tawakol was the founder and CEO of conversational AI startup Voicea, joining Cisco in 2019 when it acquired his company. Rembrand counts several prominent conversational AI and synthetic media developers among its founders, including former Voicea CPO and Cisco AI general manager David Wiener, Cisco Vidcast product director Nikki Heyder, Amazon Prime’s Virtual Product Placement founder Ahmed Saad, and Meta’s former director of AI Abdelrahman Mohamed. The company has a few influencers as clients and is now opening up applications for interested agencies, creators, and brands.
“Content creators move quickly and it’s about time that sponsors catch up. Currently it can take weeks and multiple back-and-forths for just one sponsored integration to be approved,” YouTuber and Twitch influencer Alexandra Botez, known for her chess videos on her BotezLive channel, said in a statement. “Rembrand will help drastically speed up this process on top of providing new monetization opportunities. I can’t wait to try it out!”
Follow @voicebotai Follow @erichschwartz
How ChatGPT and Midjourney’s Synthetic Media AI Helped Produce This Ad Campaign
Netflix’s New Anime Uses Generative AI Images for Background Art
