AsiaOne uses Gemini to glean deep audience insights from video, fueling record engagement and winning industry awards.
AsiaOne uses Gemini to glean deep audience insights from video, fueling record engagement and winning industry awards.
Generating new revenue by moving beyond text-based analysis
As one of Singapore's leading digital news and media companies, AsiaOne is known for its bold, catchy, and trusted reporting. Reaching diverse audiences with the right content, however, depends on accurate classification – a task that was once entirely manual and time-consuming.
The retirement of our old models was a pivotal moment that allowed us to leapfrog from simple text analysis to the much richer world of video and images, a strategic shift made possible by Gemini's multimodal capabilities.
Edmund Chua
Head of Consumer Insights and Analytics Group, AsiaOne
AsiaOne had already seen success using AI to categorize text-based articles. But when the models behind that system were retired, the team saw an opportunity: go beyond text and tackle their most complex, high-impact content. In today's media landscape – where video, images, and memes dominate – cracking this challenge could unlock deeper audience engagement and new ad revenue. Until now, this had felt too resource-intensive to explore.
The native multimodal capabilities in Gemini proved to be the ideal solution. Even without custom fine-tuning, Gemini 1.5 outperformed AsiaOne's previous, heavily tailored models, impressing the team with its accuracy straight out of the box. This validation gave them the confidence and tools to leap into a new chapter of content analysis, expanding their reach beyond text to video, images, and more.
Transforming video content into actionable business intelligence
With Gemini, AsiaOne can now analyze its most complex and engaging content at scale. In the new workflow, videos and images are uploaded to Google Cloud, where Vertex AI models automatically process them and apply rich, descriptive tags. These tags flow directly into AsiaOne's data management platform, instantly powering deeper and faster analytics.
This shift has transformed how AsiaOne creates value. For the first time, the team can map video engagement to audience psychographics, enabling more precise ad targeting and opening new revenue streams. That strategy earned them the WAN-IFRA award for Best Use of AI in Revenue Strategy. It also boosted audience engagement: AsiaOne now consistently produces hero video content that draws more than one million organic views each month.
The impact didn't stop at analytics – it reshaped AsiaOne's creative strategy, too. For example, the team can now use data to guide decisions before a single frame is shot, like identifying which personalities are most likely to resonate with a client's target audience.
In one instance, the model surfaced a surprising insight: a particular target segment had a strong affinity for overseas experiences. So the team intentionally featured a profile's overseas work exposure in a client's video to boost resonance, and it worked. This data-informed choice was instrumental in the success of their "Beyond the Dream" campaign, which won an award for Best Native Advertising and achieved more than 750,000 page views, with an average watch time of 2 minutes and 46 seconds.
We can now use data to identify which personalities resonate with a client's target audience. This allows us to go into the fine details of content design and be far more precise with our creative strategy.
Edmund Chua
Head of Consumer Insights and Analytics Group, AsiaOne
Redefining fact-checking with AI sentiment analysis
AsiaOne is now using AI to establish a new journalistic method rooted in analytics. Using the analytical capabilities of Google Cloud, the team ingests large volumes of publicly available data, from social media conversations to census statistics. This gives journalists a broader, more quantitative view of public sentiment around breaking news, moving beyond anecdotal interviews.
Our partnership with Google Cloud is a journey of shared growth and innovation. As Google Cloud continuously pushes boundaries, we grow alongside them and benefit from their advancements. This mutual progress is the foundation of a truly rewarding collaboration.
Edmund Chua
Head of Consumer Insights and Analytics Group, AsiaOne
This shift has redefined how the newsroom brings value to readers. Instead of just correcting misinformation, AsiaOne’s journalists use sentiment analysis to identify which misconceptions are the most prevalent and persistent. In keeping with AsiaOne’s promise to deliver “Off Centre, On Trend” content, they then create content that is relatable, and directly addresses and corrects those specific false narratives.
The results speak for themselves: their work on ERP2.0, a public education campaign, aimed at addressing public misconception on a new government program, earned them the WAN-IFRA award for Best Fact-Checking Project.
Looking ahead, the team is experimenting with Gemini Enterprise to create "agentic workflows" where analytics seamlessly guide content generation.
This vision is supported by a collaborative relationship with the Google Cloud team, which Edmund Chua credits for their proactive and energetic approach for consistently bringing new ideas to the table, creating a shared "sense of innovation" where both teams inspire each other to push boundaries.
AsiaOne is a leading digital news company in Singapore, providing readers with fresh, relatable, and trustworthy perspectives on trending topics in news, entertainment, and lifestyle.
Industry: Media and Entertainment
Location: Singapore
Products: Gemini, Vertex AI, Google Cloud, Gemini Enterprise
