Billboards with eyes: smart ads invade the real world
Image Source: http://distilennui.com/photos/space-Subway-10.jpg
A consortium of 11 Japanese railway companies and their advertising partners recently launched a one year trial of digital billboards that use cameras and facial recognition technology to distinguish a person’s sex and approximate age. The data gathered will be analyzed so companies can provide interactive ads which meet the interest of people who may use the station at a certain time (the ads do not instantly update based on who is passing by). In addition, the cameras apparently do not save recorded images, but only collect and analyze data about groups of people at an aggregate level.
This should come as no surprise to people who have followed the digital signage industry and their attempts to implement smart ads in billboards. Three years ago, Mini Cooper launched an ad campaign aimed at MINI owners who chose to ‘opt-in’ to a pilot program called Motorby and share some information about themselves. The result was personal messages displayed on roadside billboards (featuring MINI ads) every time a MINI owner that opted in drove by.
The idea of embedding cameras in billboards and using facial recognition technology to identify who is in fact looking at the ad was first introduced a couple of years ago. Here’s a New York Times article from 2008 that discusses how technology may help address audience measurement limitations of billboards. Quividi (mentioned in the NYT piece) and CognoVision are two companies in this space that are actively trying to solve this problem by offering video sensors (i.e. cameras) and facial recognition technology to count viewers, the length of impressions, dwell time (the time spent near the displays), potential audience size and demographics (age + gender of the audience). Both Quividi and CognoVision appear fairly up-front about their commitment to privacy and not identifying individual viewers using their technology. However, one can imagine that as facial recognition technology advances and advertisers figure out ways to craft attractive consumer incentives using an opt-in framework; the Minority Report personalized billboards could be a real possibility in the near future. For a deeper look at the privacy issues associated with digital billboards, read this Center of Democracy and Technology’s report on building a privacy infrastructure for the digital signage industry.
For now, at least, it appears that subway commuters in Japan don’t need to be too worried about privacy. Besides, judging form this video, they’re probably too busy grappling with bigger concerns (i.e. the invasion of personal space and getting into the train) to even think about a billboard watching them.
