You may soon see an advertisement on your browser page after you end your video call on Zoom. The video conferencing platform is piloting showing ads to the users who don’t pay for the services. According to the company, only free Basic users in certain countries will see these ads if they join meetings that are hosted by other free Basic users. It is not yet clear which countries are part of this pilot programme.
The company has also revealed that ads will be rolled out only on the browser page once users end their meeting and a banner on the website will provide a link that will take them to the cookie management tool. Zoom has also updated the Privacy Statement to account for this advertising program. The company claims that it will not use meeting, webinar, or messaging content (specifically, audio, video, files, and messages) for any marketing, promotions, or third-party advertising purposes.
Last month, the company rolled out its live transcription feature for all users. Previously, the feature was available only for paid users. The plan to make it available for all the users for free was announced by the company in February this year. Now that it is live, users need not request for the access, but can simply enable it by using the meeting toolbar.
The feature uses robot transcription services which enables speech to text transcription in Zoom Meeting and webinars. Other video conferencing platforms are also adapting this tool. Currently, it is limited to English language, however, the company says that it will add support for more languages soon. The platform aims to offer automated closed captioning in 30 languages over the next one year. The company has revealed that it is also working to add live translation for 12 different languages over the same time frame.
