Automatic detection of TV commercials

TV advertising commercials are a critical marketing tool for many companies. Their interspersion within regular broadcast television programming can be entertaining, informing, annoying or a sales gold mine depending on one's viewpoint. As a result, there are two major reasons for being able to detect commercial segments within television broadcasts. These two applications' goals - at least indirectly - are at odds with each other. One application seeks to identify and track when specific commercials are broadcast. Advertisers, in particular, like to verify that their contracts with broadcasters are fulfilled as promised. The other group wants to detect commercials for the purpose of eliminating them from their recordings. This group consists of viewers who want to watch their recorded television shows without the annoyance of commercials. Video database maintainers would also appreciate the ability to automatically edit out commercials in stored shows and thereby decrease storage requirements. Of course, advertisers are strongly opposed to such devices because that defeats the purpose of the commercials. The article discusses several algorithms that have been experimentally used to detect commercials, as well as devices that are currently available for this purpose.