Through its impact and its ability to capture attention, video has risen to the forefront of marketing levers. YouTube, TikTok and social networks have accelerated its adoption, while the proliferation of formats has profoundly complicated its implementation. Companies have integrated video at all levels of their communication, forcing marketing departments to change scale: producing, distributing and distributing video content is now a industrial logicfar removed from the historical model of the single spot.
It is precisely this change that was decoded Olivier Reynaudfounder and CEO of IAECa company specializing in intelligent automation of video versioning.
Video, from a single format to systemic fragmentation
Remember the time when advertising was only marginally available for digital. A thirty-second film, in 16:9 format, was then enough to irrigate television and, by extension, the web. This model has disappeared. A global campaign now requires dozens, sometimes hundreds of variations, adapted to platforms, uses and distribution contexts. Added to this is the rise of native video content, which has become a pillar of many communication strategies, and which is further increasing the pressure on marketing production chains.
Vertical or square formats, variable durations, constraints specific to each platform, implicit visibility rules, local requirements in terms of subtitling, music or graphic overlay: video has become fragmented, and with it marketing workflows. “While one format was enough, today we see big brands having to make 50, 200 or 500 variations for a single campaign,” summarizes Olivier Reynaud.
This inflation is not just a creative subject and becomes a operational problemboth in terms of deadlines, costs and quality. Manually adapting hundreds of formats mobilizes teams for several months, exposes them to errors and creates recurring friction between advertisers, agencies and internal studios.
The real bottleneck: post-master
It is on this point that Aïve asserts its position. The company is neither involved in the initial production of the film nor in the generation of content ex nihilo. It is located after the masterat the precise place where organizations begin to saturate: creative versioning.
Reformatting, reduction of duration, adaptation of the framing, choice of shots, reorganization of the narration, adjustment of the audio, addition of subtitles or contextual texts: this work, essential to the performance of campaigns, remains largely manual today. It is based on powerful tools, starting with those offered by Adobebut not very automated, and requires expertise that is difficult to scale.
“No creative person likes to do that, but it’s absolutely necessary,” observes Olivier Reynaud. Aive’s promise consists precisely of automate up to 80 to 90% of these repetitive taskswithout altering the creative dimension.
Transform video into usable data
The technological thesis defended by Aïve considers the video no longer as a simple file, but as a structured data set. Using proprietary multimodal technology, the platform analyzes the constituent elements of a film — shots, objects, faces, emotions, voices, music, logos, rhythms — in order to understand its structure and intention.
This understanding then makes it possible to orchestrate relevant adaptations according to a specific objective, whether for a social network, advertising screens, connected televisions, DOOH displays or programmatic broadcasting. This is not a simple automatic reframing, but work on the narration itself: which shots to keep, which to shorten, where to reposition the key message, how to preserve the meaning by reducing the duration.
Aive also introduced a Creative Scorepresented as a real-time co-pilot. As the user modifies a format, it evolves to indicate how well the version produced is aligned with the standards and objectives of the targeted channel. “When we edit, we don’t do it blindly,” explains Olivier Reynaud.
A tool designed for marketing departments
Another structuring element: accessibility. Aïve presents itself as a web solution, usable without advanced editing expertise. The issue is to give autonomy back to marketing teams on tasks with low creative added value, while allowing them to produce more formats, more quickly.
This logic promotes new organizational balances. In many cases, brands, agencies and media use the platform jointly, each according to their specific needs.
A structuring ambition, yet to be tested
Founded in 2019, Aive has raised just over twenty-six million euros since its creation, first from business angels and family offices, then during a series A led by Invus. The company now boasts around one million euros in annual recurring revenue and around thirty employees, with the objective of multiplying its activity tenfold in the next two years.
