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In todayās digital landscape, User-Generated Content (UGC) has emerged as a treasure trove of valuable information. Reviews, social media posts, videos, blogs, and community forums provide deep insights into consumer behavior, preferences, and opinions. Leveraging this content effectively for product metadata generation is a game-changing business strategy. Companies can unlock many opportunities to enhance product discoverability, customer engagement, and operational efficiency by combining custom data extraction techniques and generative AI.
This article explores the intricacies of custom data extraction for product metadata generation using UGC and generative AI, exploring its methodology, benefits, challenges, and future potential.
What is Product Metadata, and Why Does It Matter?
Product metadata refers to the structured data that describes and categorizes a product. It serves as a foundation for organizing and presenting product information in a way that is useful and accessible to various stakeholders, including customers, businesses, and algorithms. Metadata includes attributes such as product name, description, features, specifications, tags, and other key details that help define a productās identity and functionality.
The significance of accurate and rich metadata cannot be overstated, as it underpins several critical aspects of the digital and physical marketplace. Below are some key reasons why product metadata matters:
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Metadata plays a pivotal role in enhancing product discoverability on search engines. Attributes like product descriptions, tags, and keywords help search engine algorithms understand what the product is about, ensuring it appears in relevant search results. For instance, a well-structured product title and detailed description improve click-through rates by matching user intent more effectively. Rich metadata also enables search engines to generate informative snippets, such as product prices and ratings, directly in search results, further driving traffic.
2. Personalized Recommendations
Metadata forms the backbone of AI-driven recommendation engines. By analyzing product attributes and customer behavior, these engines can deliver highly targeted and relevant suggestions to users. For example, if a customer frequently purchases eco-friendly products, metadata indicating a productās sustainability features can trigger personalized recommendations, enhancing the shopping experience and increasing conversion rates.
3. Customer Experience
A seamless and intuitive customer experience is closely tied to the quality of product metadata. Accurate and detailed metadata improves search functionality and navigation on e-commerce platforms, allowing customers to find what they want with minimal effort. Filters and sorting options, such as price range, color, or size, rely on metadata to provide relevant results. Furthermore, rich metadata enables better visual and textual content integration, creating a more engaging and informative shopping journey.
4. Operational Efficiency
Beyond customer-facing benefits, metadata also supports internal business processes. Structured and accurate metadata simplifies inventory management, enabling businesses to track stock levels, categorize products, and optimize supply chains. Logistics and analytics systems also leverage metadata to identify trends, predict demand, and streamline operations, ensuring timely delivery and efficient resource allocation.
Challenges in Metadata Generation
Traditionally, metadata generation relied heavily on manual inputs or limited automation, often resulting in incomplete or inconsistent data. This approach is time-consuming, prone to human error, and difficult to scale, especially as product catalogs grow more complex. The lack of standardized practices further exacerbates the problem, leading to metadata that may be misaligned with customer needs or search engine requirements.
Innovative solutions are emerging to address these challenges. One of the most promising approaches is integrating user-generated content (UGC) with generative AI to create dynamic, comprehensive, and scalable metadata.
The Role of UGC in Metadata Generation
User-generated content (UGC) provides authentic, diverse, and real-time perspectives on products and services. It encompasses a wide array of formats that are rich with data points, including:
1. Customer Reviews
Customer reviews offer detailed feedback on product performance, quality, and usability. These reviews often highlight specific features, strengths, and shortcomings that matter most to users. For example, a review for a smartphone might mention its exceptional battery life or subpar camera quality. Such insights can be extracted to generate descriptive tags, refine product descriptions, or highlight unique selling points.
2. Social Media Posts
Social media platforms are treasure troves of insights into trends, emerging preferences, and brand sentiment. Posts, comments, and hashtags often reveal what customers talk about and value in a product. For example, analyzing Instagram hashtags associated with a fitness tracker can uncover keywords like “waterproof,” “step count,” or “heart rate monitor,” which can then be incorporated into product metadata to align with customer interests.
3. Community Forums
Online forums and discussion boards provide a space for in-depth discussions and expert opinions on niche products. These platforms often address common questions, concerns, or advanced use cases, offering valuable insights into customer priorities. For instance, a tech forum discussing gaming laptops might focus on aspects like GPU performance, cooling systems, or screen refresh rates, which can be emphasized in metadata to attract informed buyers.
4. Video Content
Tutorials, unboxings, and reviews on YouTube provide visual and contextual product information. These videos often demonstrate real-world applications, showcase features, and highlight user experiences. Metadata can benefit from this rich content by capturing frequently mentioned attributes or use cases, enhancing the depth and relevance of product descriptions.
Transforming UGC into Actionable Metadata
While UGC is abundant and valuable, it is often unstructured, noisy, and voluminous, posing meaningful extraction and processing challenges. Advanced techniques are required to transform this raw data into actionable metadata. Hereās how this transformation can be achieved:
1. Sentiment Analysis
Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques can analyze customer reviews and social media posts to identify feature-specific sentiments. For instance, if multiple reviews praise the comfort of a shoe, a tag like “highly comfortable” can be added to the metadata. Similarly, recurring criticisms can highlight areas for improvement.
2. Keyword Extraction
Algorithms can identify trending keywords and phrases from social media, forums, and video transcripts. These keywords help enhance product categorization and ensure alignment with current market trends. For example, analyzing tweets about winter coats might reveal terms like “thermal insulation” or “water-resistant,” which can be added to the metadata.
3. Topic Modeling
Topic modeling techniques can group discussions or reviews into themes, making identifying common customer concerns or interests easier. For instance, a topic model for smartphone reviews might reveal clusters around battery life, camera quality, and durability, guiding the creation of metadata that addresses these themes.
4. Visual Recognition
AI-powered visual recognition tools can analyze images and videos to extract visual features. For example, an AI system can analyze unboxing videos to identify product colors, packaging details, or accessory inclusions, enriching the metadata with visual attributes.
Custom Data Extraction Techniques
Custom data extraction refers to identifying, capturing, and structuring relevant information from raw data sources to meet specific objectives. This approach is particularly valuable in scenarios where generic solutions fall short, such as user-generated content (UGC) analysis. The techniques for custom data extraction are diverse and often tailored to the data’s unique requirements and the extraction process’s goals. Below, we explore key techniques for extracting information from UGC, highlighting their functionalities and applications.
1. Natural Language Processing (NLP)
Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a cornerstone of text analysis, enabling the extraction of meaningful insights from text-heavy UGC like reviews, comments, or social media posts. NLP techniques are essential for interpreting human language in a structured and actionable format. Key applications include:
- Entity Recognition: This involves identifying and categorizing entities such as product names, features, brands, locations, and more. For example, an NLP model can parse a review to recognize mentions of a product (e.g., “iPhone 14”), associated features (e.g., “battery life”), or competing brands.
- Sentiment Analysis: By analyzing the tone and context of text, sentiment analysis determines whether the sentiment expressed is positive, neutral, or negative. This is invaluable for assessing public perception of a product or service. For instance, customer feedback mentioning “excellent performance” indicates positive sentiment, while phrases like “poor quality” signal dissatisfaction.
- Topic Modeling: Topic modeling uncovers hidden themes and patterns in large datasets, clustering content into relevant topics. For example, analyzing a dataset of social media posts might reveal dominant themes like pricing concerns, design preferences, or customer support issues.
2. Web Scraping
Web scraping is a powerful technique for gathering data from websites, forums, and social media platforms. It involves extracting content from web pages, both structured and unstructured, and transforming it into a usable format. Modern tools such as Beautiful Soup, Scrapy, and Puppeteer make this process efficient and scalable.
Web scraping enables:
- Data Collection from Structured Pages: For example, scraping product listings on e-commerce websites to analyze pricing and availability trends.
- Extraction from Unstructured Sources: Forums and social media platforms often present unstructured data. Web scraping can capture discussions, comments, and hashtags for deeper analysis.
- Automation: Tools can be programmed to scrape data periodically, ensuring updated information for ongoing projects.
3. API Integration
Many platforms provide Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to access their data directly, offering a structured and reliable way to extract UGC. APIs eliminate the need for manual data collection and allow for seamless integration into existing workflows. Examples of API usage include:
- Twitter API: Extract tweets, hashtags, and user interactions to analyze trending topics or brand mentions.
- Reddit API: Access community discussions, upvotes, and comment threads to gauge public opinion or identify emerging trends.
- YouTube Data API: Extract metadata from videos, such as titles, descriptions, and comments, for content performance analysis.
By leveraging APIs, organizations can access high-quality data while ensuring compliance with platform policies and data accuracy.
4. Image and Video Analysis
The increasing prevalence of visual content in UGC necessitates using computer vision techniques for metadata extraction and analysis. These techniques enable:
- Brand Logo Identification: Recognizing logos in images or videos to track brand visibility and monitor unauthorized usage.
- Caption and Tag Extraction: Extracting and analyzing captions, tags, and other video metadata to understand audience engagement and sentiment.
- Visual Element Analysis: To identify trends and preferences, assess elements like colors, patterns, and textures. For example, analyzing product images shared on social media can reveal popular design features.
Computer vision advancements have expanded the scope of UGC analysis, enabling extracting insights from static and dynamic visual content.
5. Custom Parsing Algorithms
For datasets in unique or proprietary formats, custom parsing algorithms are indispensable. These algorithms allow for tailored data extraction by adapting to specific formats, such as CSV files, JSON data, or XML structures. Custom parsing ensures:
- Flexibility: The ability to handle diverse data formats, ensuring compatibility with various data sources.
- Precision: Parsing algorithms can be fine-tuned to extract only the most relevant information, minimizing noise and redundancy.
- Scalability: They can be automated to process large datasets efficiently, enabling real-time data extraction for dynamic use cases.
Generative AI in Metadata Creation
Generative AI models, such as GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) and its successors, have transformed how content is created and enriched. These models complement custom data extraction techniques by enabling advanced metadata generation, enhancing the value of extracted data. Here are some key applications of generative AI in metadata creation:
1. Automatic Summarization
Generative AI can condense lengthy UGC into concise summaries, such as detailed product reviews or extensive forum discussions. These summaries highlight key points, saving time for users and facilitating decision-making. For example, summarizing hundreds of customer reviews into a single paragraph that captures recurring themes and sentiments.
2. Keyword Generation
AI models analyze UGC to generate high-value keywords tailored to target audiences. These keywords enhance search engine optimization (SEO) efforts and improve content discoverability. For instance, analyzing social media posts about a product can reveal keywords like “eco-friendly,” “budget-friendly,” or “premium quality.”
3. Content Enrichment
AI-generated metadata can include creative and human-like descriptions emphasizing product benefits and unique selling points. For example, enriching a product listing with engaging phrases like “sleek design for modern lifestyles” or “engineered for unmatched performance.”
4. Semantic Tagging
Generative AI excels at assigning semantic labels to content, improving its organization and searchability. For instance, UGC can be tagged with labels such as “durability,” “aesthetics,” or “user-friendliness” based on the textās context.
5. Multilingual Support
Generative AI supports multiple languages, enabling the creation of localized metadata for global markets. This particularly benefits businesses aiming to cater to diverse audiences, as it ensures cultural and linguistic relevance.
Building a Workflow for UGC-Driven Metadata Generation
Combining custom data extraction and generative AI to produce metadata from user-generated content (UGC) requires a structured and well-thought-out workflow. This ensures the process is efficient, scalable, and produces high-quality results. Below is a detailed step-by-step guide to creating such a workflow.
Step 1: Data Collection
The first step in the workflow involves gathering relevant UGC. This content can come from various sources, including customer reviews, social media platforms, discussion forums, blogs, and other user-driven platforms. To collect this data effectively:
- Identify Relevant UGC Sources: Determine which platforms and channels provide the most pertinent data for your needs. For example, product reviews on e-commerce websites might be more beneficial for retail businesses, while social media posts and comments might offer insights into brand sentiment.
- Use Web Scraping, APIs, or Third-Party Tools: Leverage web scraping tools and APIs to extract data from these platforms. For example, tools like BeautifulSoup or Scrapy can automate web scraping, while APIs like Twitter or Reddit can provide structured data access. Third-party services such as Brandwatch or DataMiner can also help gather data efficiently.
- Ensure Compliance with Data Privacy and Platform Policies: Following regulations like GDPR and CCPA is critical. Understand platform-specific terms of service to avoid legal or ethical violations. Obtain necessary permissions and inform users if required.
Step 2: Preprocessing
Raw UGC data often contains noise, inconsistencies, and irrelevant information. Preprocessing transforms this data into a cleaner and more structured form, preparing it for analysis and AI processing. Key steps in preprocessing include:
- Data Cleaning: Remove noise such as advertisements, emojis, and spam content. Eliminate duplicates to avoid skewing results and filter out irrelevant information that does not align with the intended use case.
- Standardization: Ensure data consistency by normalizing text. This might involve converting text to lowercase, removing stop words, or lemmatizing terms to their root forms. For numerical data, consistent units or scales should be applied.
- Categorization: Organize data into meaningful categories. For instance, group reviews by product type, customer demographics, or discussion themes. This step is crucial for generating focused metadata.
Step 3: Data Extraction
This step involves identifying and isolating valuable information from the preprocessed data. Advanced technologies are applied here to extract insights:
- NLP Techniques: Natural language processing (NLP) methods can extract entities (e.g., product names, locations), identify sentiments (positive, neutral, or negative), and uncover topics or recurring themes in the text. Tools like spaCy or NLTK are commonly used for this purpose.
- Computer Vision Models: For visual UGC, such as photos or videos, computer vision models can analyze content to identify objects, logos, and other relevant elements. Pre-trained models like those in TensorFlow or PyTorch can be adapted for this task.
- Custom Scripts: When dealing with unique data formats or niche content, custom scripts may be required to extract the desired information accurately. Regular expressions or domain-specific parsers can be effective for this purpose.
Step 4: Metadata Generation
Once the key information is extracted, the next step is to generate metadata using generative AI models. Metadata may include descriptions, tags, or other structured data that help categorize and contextualize the UGC. This process involves:
- Feeding Extracted Data into Generative AI Models: Input the cleaned and extracted data into AI systems such as OpenAIās GPT or similar models to generate metadata. Ensure the prompts are clear and structured to elicit the desired outputs.
- Configuring Prompts: Customize prompts to generate metadata tailored to specific needs. For instance, ask the AI to generate SEO-friendly tags or succinct summaries for product reviews.
- Fine-Tuning Models: Adapt the AIās performance to align with your brandās tone, style, and requirements. Fine-tuning with domain-specific data or using embeddings can improve relevance and accuracy.
Step 5: Validation and Optimization
Generated metadata must be validated to ensure it meets quality and accuracy standards. This step involves:
- Manual and Automated Review: Have human reviewers check the AIās output for context relevance and adherence to brand guidelines. Simultaneously, use automated tools to detect spelling, grammar, or plagiarism issues.
- Feedback Loops: Incorporate feedback from users or reviewers into the AI training process. The workflowās output quality can improve over time by iteratively refining prompts and models.
- Performance Metrics: Track metadata accuracy, generation time, and user engagement with the resulting metadata. Use these insights to optimize the process further.
Challenges and Mitigation Strategies
While the outlined workflow offers a robust foundation, challenges may arise. Below are common issues and strategies to address them:
- Data Quality Issues
- Challenge: UGC often contains noisy, incomplete, or biased information, which can affect metadata quality.
- Mitigation: Apply advanced preprocessing techniques like sentiment filtering or outlier detection. Set quality thresholds to exclude low-value data.
- Scalability
- Challenge: Handling large volumes of UGC data can be resource-intensive.
- Mitigation: Cloud-based services like AWS or Google Cloud and parallel processing frameworks such as Apache Spark can be used to manage high data volumes efficiently.
- Compliance and Ethics
- Challenge: Ensuring adherence to data privacy laws and ethical considerations.
- Mitigation: Stay updated on regulations like GDPR and CCPA. Communicate data usage policies and obtain explicit user consent when required.
- Model Bias
- Challenge: Generative AI models may reflect inherent biases from their training data, leading to skewed metadata.
- Mitigation: Use diverse and representative datasets for training. Implement bias-detection tools and continuously monitor outputs for signs of bias.
- Integration Complexity
- Challenge: Integrating the workflow into existing systems can be challenging.
- Mitigation: Employ APIs and modular architectures to ensure smooth interoperability with legacy systems and workflows.
Organizations can effectively harness UGC and generative AI to produce high-quality, actionable metadata by addressing these challenges and following the structured workflow. This approach enhances operational efficiency and unlocks valuable insights from user-generated content.
Benefits of UGC-Driven Metadata Generation
Enhanced SEO Performance
User-generated content (UGC) is a treasure trove for generating rich, keyword-optimized metadata. This metadata aligns with how users naturally search for products and services, boosting organic search rankings. By incorporating real-world terms and phrases used by actual customers, businesses can improve the relevance of their metadata, making their content more discoverable. For instance, customer reviews often include long-tail keywords, which are highly valuable for SEO but might be overlooked in traditional metadata strategies. Enhanced visibility in search engines drives more traffic and attracts the right audience, leading to better engagement and higher click-through rates.
Increased Conversion Rates
Accurate and appealing metadata captures users’ attention and encourages them to take action. Descriptions generated from UGC reflect authentic customer language and sentiment, creating a sense of trust and relatability. When potential customers encounter metadata that mirrors their experiences and needs, they are more likely to engage with the content, explore further, and purchase. For example, a review snippet emphasizing a productās durability or unique features can directly address customer concerns, increasing the likelihood of conversion. Additionally, dynamic metadata allows businesses to highlight trending products, seasonal offers, or customer favorites, further driving engagement and sales.
Cost Efficiency
Traditionally, metadata generation has been labor-intensive, requiring significant manual effort and expertise. Automating this process with UGC and AI saves time and reduces costs associated with hiring and training metadata specialists. Businesses can scale their metadata generation efforts without proportionally increasing expenses, enabling them to focus resources on other strategic areas. Moreover, UGC-driven automation minimizes errors and inconsistencies, ensuring high-quality metadata across large volumes of content. This cost-effective approach makes it accessible for businesses of all sizes to compete in the digital landscape.
Real-Time Updates
In todayās fast-paced digital environment, static metadata can quickly become outdated, reducing effectiveness. UGC-driven AI-powered processes offer the ability to update metadata dynamically in real-time. As new reviews, comments, and user interactions are generated, AI systems can instantly analyze and incorporate this data to refresh metadata. This ensures businesses stay relevant and responsive to current trends, customer preferences, and market demands. For example, if a particular feature of a product becomes popular based on recent reviews, the metadata can be updated to highlight this, attracting more potential buyers.
Global Reach
Expanding into international markets requires metadata that resonates with diverse audiences. UGC-driven systems can automatically generate multilingual metadata, breaking down language barriers and enabling businesses to reach a global audience. By leveraging AI translation tools and region-specific UGC, companies can create culturally relevant metadata that appeals to local customers. This enhances user experience and improves search engine visibility in non-English markets. Multilingual metadata empowers businesses to easily tap into new markets, driving growth and brand recognition worldwide.
Future Trends and Opportunities
Integration with AR/VR
Integrating UGC-driven metadata with augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies holds immense potential. Metadata can enhance immersive experiences by providing detailed product descriptions, user reviews, and interactive features within AR/VR environments. For instance, while exploring a virtual store, users can access metadata generated from customer reviews to understand product benefits and make informed decisions. This seamless combination of UGC and AR/VR can revolutionize how customers interact with products, offering a more profound, more engaging shopping experience.
Voice Search Optimization
The growing popularity of voice assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant has transformed how people search for information. Voice search queries are often conversational and context-specific, requiring metadata that aligns with this natural language format. AI-generated metadata can be tailored to match these queries, leveraging UGC to identify and incorporate commonly used phrases and questions. By optimizing for voice search, businesses can improve their visibility in this emerging channel, ensuring they remain competitive as consumer behavior evolves.
Real-Time Feedback Loops
AI systems powered by UGC thrive on continuous learning. Real-time feedback loops enable these systems to improve metadata quality by analyzing new content and user interactions. For example, if metadata phrasing consistently drives higher engagement, the system can adapt and replicate this strategy across other content. Conversely, underperforming metadata can be identified and refined promptly. This iterative process ensures that metadata remains relevant, effective, and aligned with customer needs, fostering sustained growth and performance.
Cross-Channel Consistency
Inconsistent messaging across platforms can confuse customers and dilute brand identity. UGC-driven metadata helps maintain uniformity by generating consistent descriptions and tags for products and services across all channels. Whether itās a website, social media, or e-commerce platform, unified metadata ensures that customers receive a coherent brand message, enhancing their overall experience. This consistency builds trust and reinforces brand recognition, making it easier for businesses to cultivate loyal customer relationships.
Ethical AI Practices
Ethical considerations will take center stage as AI-driven metadata generation becomes more prevalent. Future frameworks will emphasize transparency, fairness, and accountability in how AI systems process and utilize UGC. Businesses must ensure that their AI models avoid biases, respect user privacy, and adhere to ethical guidelines. For instance, metadata should accurately represent products without exaggeration or manipulation. Transparent AI practices will foster customer trust, reinforcing the credibility and integrity of businesses that prioritize ethical considerations.
How We Did It At ThatWare?
Scenario:
I was working on the product page metadata optimization, but I didnāt want to use the old-school method. I was required to create or generate custom product metadata using real-time data and experience.
So, I have used screaming from and Chat GPT to create compelling metadata for the products.
Here are the following steps to accomplish the goal:
Step1: We need to have the customer reviews to get the real-time user experience for the products,
Go to the configuration >>Custom>>Custom Extraction
Step 2: Click on ADD button
Step 3: Click on the āWebā button
Step 4: Provide any product URL to the search bar, press the enter button from the keyboard, and wait for the webpage rendering
Step 5: After successfully rendering the page, scroll down to the review section of the page and click on any one of the review text
Now, look at the lefthand side of the āSuggestionsā section; you will get the regex for the extraction. Also, you need to check the āRendered HTML Previewā section to ensure the actual review text extraction.
Step 6: Now copy the regex code from the suggestion section,
And paste the regex and click on the ok button.
Step 7: Now crawl the website, and after finishing the crawl, click on āCustom Extractionā
Step 8: Now we have the reviews data for the products, we need to extract the data, click on the āExportā button
Step 9: After exporting the file, we need to filter the URLs and keep only product Pages to generate metadata for product pages.
Step 10: Now itās time to utilize ChatGPT
Go to ChatGPT and provide the current meta description and the product reviews that have been extracted, and give the following prompt to generate the enhanced meta description:
Prompt:
Read the current meta description and the product reviews mentioned, and create a new meta description blending the data and the context to generate a properly formatted meaningful meta description based on the provided data.
After that, we can get the enhanced meta description for the page:
But here, we need to provide the data of each page individually, we can do it for multiple URLs at once and upload the filtered review Excel file containing the current meta description:
Copy and paste the following prompt:
Scan the Excel file and read the text value of column B to column J for each row, and also scan each URL meta description from the current meta description column and generate a meta description of 160 characters for each URL based on the text value of the columns and the present meta description for the product URls. The meta description should be mixed with the current meta description value and the text value of the columns, but the sentences should be meaningful and well-structured. Create a separate Excel sheet containing all the data.
Now, We can simply download the Excel file,
Conclusion
The fusion of custom data extraction and generative AI has unlocked unprecedented potential for product metadata generation. By harnessing the power of UGC, businesses can create rich, accurate, and dynamic metadata that drives SEO performance, enhances customer engagement, and streamlines operations. This transformative approach addresses the challenges of traditional metadata generation and positions businesses for success in the digital economy.
While ethical considerations and technological complexity remain, strategic implementation and continuous optimization can overcome these hurdles. Integrating advanced technologies like AR/VR, voice search optimization, and real-time feedback loops further expands the possibilities for metadata-driven growth. Businesses can reach new markets and establish a strong global presence by prioritizing cross-channel consistency and adopting multilingual capabilities.
In an ever-evolving digital landscape, UGC-driven metadata generation offers a competitive edge. Businesses that embrace this innovative approach can look forward to enhanced visibility, improved customer experiences, and sustained growth. As AI and UGC continue to evolve, the future of metadata generation promises exciting opportunities for innovation, creativity, and success.
Thatware | Founder & CEO
Tuhin is recognized across the globe for his vision to revolutionize digital transformation industry with the help of cutting-edge technology. He won bronze for India at the Stevie Awards USA as well as winning the India Business Awards, India Technology Award, Top 100 influential tech leaders from Analytics Insights, Clutch Global Front runner in digital marketing, founder of the fastest growing company in Asia by The CEO Magazine and is a TEDx speaker.