The eyes have it, the growth of “smart” advertising

Advertising is big business, with over 3 billion U.S. dollars spent on digital out-of-home media [a large percentage of which includes digital billboards] last year alone, with that figure set to rise past 5 billion over the next 3 years. But how is this money being spent and to what end? Well, in retail at least it is obviously to entice the audience to purchase whatever is being sold, with "targeted" campaigns aimed at speaking directly to the audience most likely to buy your product. But how well are these adverts performing? And what kind of marginal gains can be made with the introduction of some even deeper analysis?

In the 2002 film Minority Report there was a slew of technological marvels, some of which are already in play but none more intriguing and/or terrifying than the ultra-surveillance society with cameras everywhere, identifying every citizen by their eyes. one scene shows the hero [having had an eye transplant] walking by shops that change the holographic advert to appeal to him [or the original owner of his eyes at least] with a personalised advert.

Now this level of customisation might still be in the realms of science fiction but the technology is most certainly not. Facial and iris recognition systems have been in place for decades but have also recently made it into consumer products from smart phones to laptop computers.

There is of course a big difference between opting into a system designed to improve security and privacy and having your eyes / face harvested for advertising purposes, but when you remove the personal characteristics and use simply the generic profiling there is plenty of potential in using this anonymised data to better target potential customers.

Companies have been working with - and improving - this technology for the use with digital advertising for over a decade and while not yet a taken up across all digital billboards right now, these systems have grown in sophistication and popularity. These systems though have mainly been interactive, with the "user" [should they look at the advert] incorporated in it in some way. This can be a fun "gimmick", seeing yourself in a particular outfit, or perhaps playing a lead role in an advert but there could be much more valuable insights learned from a passive approach.

If the passer-by were offered simply a regular video advert or a digital still image, or even a shop window display, where multiple products are shown together, analysing consumers' behaviour could show what about the advert is grabbing, holding or losing their attention and if there are different behaviours from different demographics.

Yes, it's likely that these insights will largely confirm the assumptions of the advertisers going in [middle aged men are drawn to sheds, etc.] but as well as using these insights to validate the campaign [and possibly secure next years funding], there may well be niches that would ordinarily be overlooked; how long did it take for handbags to make the transition from a woman's carry-all to a trendy manly accessory that even Jack Bauer relies upon regularly?

Insights like this may be on some peoples radar already but what better way to back your assertions than to have readily available data to back it up? And better still, when you are able to automate this analysis you can build a roadmap for targeted advertising and have a clearer picture of what consumers actually want.

Everyone likes to feel like they are being spoken to directly, and this is one way this type of technology could be used to identify those niches.