How video creative platform Phyron uses AI to sell cars

This week, video creative automation platform Phyron expanded into the North American market with the opening of a new Toronto office. Since starting in 2019, the Sweden-based company has helped produce digital videos for over 1,000 car dealerships and manufacturers. In the last 15 months, car videos created using its AI technology have garnered over 234 million views.

How it works. Phyron takes a data feed from its brand customer – the dealership or carmaker. With a minimum of four images from the individual car for sale, a video is produced with the Phyron software.

AI recognizes the key properties in the car images and edits them automatically into the video template. It can identify differences between interior and exterior photos and also strip away backgrounds and replace them with neutral ones. The software also adds special effects and shadows for a professional look, as well as logos and other brand assets.

Product details, pricing and special offers are also designed into the video, and the video is re-rendered if any changes are made to the details in the data feed by the brand.

Why we care. Creative automation solutions are a growing application for AI. Marketers need to fill digital channels with content at scale. They also need to keep up with the high expectations for consumers who engage on these channels.

Competitors are raising the bar in a content “arms race” of sorts. So, a static image that can be more easily distributed from website to search ad to mobile app won’t cut it, for big brands and even for local car dealerships. This fuels the need for videos, and for the democratization of video content production through automated solutions, as well as copywriting for written messages. There is also a similar push to standardize and simplify the production of 3D images.

Read next: The AI content creation space is growing

Higher demand in North America. Phyron CEO Johan Sundstrand sees expectations for automotive marketing to be similar in Europe and North America. They use similar performance metrics (inventory turn, increased views, lead generation, cost per video) that lead to a similar value proposition from the Phyron technology. Dealerships want minimal time spent by staff updating listings and more time spent with customers.

“We do see a higher demand for marketing content in North American markets,” said Sundstrand. “European dealer groups are depending more on their local marketplace and classified ads, whereas in North America you drive more traffic and market yourself. So we believe that car videos will play an even bigger role in acquiring customers for them.”

About The Author

Chris Wood draws on over 15 years of reporting experience as a B2B editor and journalist. At DMN, he served as associate editor, offering original analysis on the evolving marketing tech landscape. He has interviewed leaders in tech and policy, from Canva CEO Melanie Perkins, to former Cisco CEO John Chambers, and Vivek Kundra, appointed by Barack Obama as the country’s first federal CIO. He is especially interested in how new technologies, including voice and blockchain, are disrupting the marketing world as we know it. In 2019, he moderated a panel on “innovation theater” at Fintech Inn, in Vilnius. In addition to his marketing-focused reporting in industry trades like Robotics Trends, Modern Brewery Age and AdNation News, Wood has also written for KIRKUS, and contributes fiction, criticism and poetry to several leading book blogs. He studied English at Fairfield University, and was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. He lives in New York.