Two Men Bring Visible Change to Search

"If somebody's watching a video of golf, our technology can correctly identify that this is golfing, not pictures of a park," says Calkins. "We know that if it's the PGA, they don't need our technology [for advertisement placement], because advertising is placed by humans for the PGA, but more automated solutions are needed for the longer tail. We're talking about more random, possibly even user-generated video about golfing."

This is where the rubber finally meets the road for CogniSign, especially considering the explosion of social media and user-generated images and videos.

"Advertising has faced a lot of challenges in user-generated content or social media content," says Calkins. "But everyone wants to solve that problem, and we think with our technology, adding a visual component to it and adding better targeting we can help solve that problem."

Although CogniSign is on the crest of big success now, it has taken a while. Calkins says when they started in 2003, they figured the demand would have been really high by 2006 or 2007, but it's only recently that market demand has caught up with their solution. CogniSign isn't the first business in their search space. But like Google, CongiSign could quickly dominate with superior technology. As for the company's ability to last as long as it has, Calkins credits running it with a low burn rate of capital.

Going forward, Calkins says, CogniSign will transfer its technology into the mobile environment. In short, it will use its image-recognition technology coupled with camera phones and location-based technology (GPS and satellite triangulation) to allow mobile-phone users to search visually by snapping pictures. For example, if a user takes a picture of a building in San Francisco, the image recognition could send that information to a third-party service and give a restaurant recommendation within that building by being able to recognize both the building and the location.

"Our grand vision is making the Web and mobile a more visual place," says Calkins.