SYCO Entertainment, owned by music industry big shot Simon Cowell, is partnering with a video analytics start-up to help find the next international superstar.

Following a successful trial, SYCO is running a partnership with the digital analytics platform, called VIDiRO, for talent spotting on YouTube.

The start-up uses an advanced data-driven algorithm which categorises in real time millions of individual videos. It then present key insights back to the user.

VIDiRO came onto the commercial radar after it won the Cross-Sector Innovation Digital Challenge, set by the government’s innovation agency Innovate UK.

Simon Factor, VIDiRO’s CEO, said: “VIDiRO’s core technology sits at the melting point between online video and social media, the two hottest categories in digital marketing for many media companies and brands.

“The key innovation of this research and development project was the creating of advanced new algorithms for our data platform, so that it is able to categorise in real-time millions of individual videos on YouTube.

“This core technology can also be deployed by brand managers and ad buyers to run more effective YouTube campaigns.”

Key to the technology is the ability to spot emerging trends in video, so potentially high-performing videos can be picked up before they start trending.

Around 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.

VIDiRO identifies the content of each video and measures how it spreads through social media. It measures audience engagement and identifies influencers across different categories.

Matt Sansam, programme manager at IC tomorrow, part of Innovate UK, said: “We are delighted with the outcome of the SYCO-VIDiRO project.

“The ethos of the Cross-Sector Innovation Digital Challenge was to enable the winners to develop specific solutions with industry partners, trial them with support from those partners and to keep the IP they developed in the process.

“In the case of VIDiRO, important customer confidence has clearly been built. They are now well placed to develop their IP into related product propositions in other media categories.”