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When You Watch These Ads, The Ads Check You Out
Watch an advertisement on a video screen in a mall, health club or grocery store and there’s a slim – but growing – chance the ad is watching you too.
Small cameras can now be embedded in the screen or hidden around it, tracking who looks at the screen and for how long. The makers of the tracking systems say the software can determine the viewer’s gender, approximate age range and, in some cases, ethnicity – and can change the ads accordingly.
And even if the ads don’t shift based on which people are watching, the technology’s ability to determine the viewers’ demographics is golden for advertisers who want to know how effectively they’re reaching their target audience.
So a video screen might show a motorcycle ad for a group of men, but switch to a minivan ad when women and children join them, said Vicki Rabenou, the chief measurement officer of Tampa, Fla.-based TruMedia Technologies Inc., one of the leaders in developing the technology.
“This is proactive merchandising,” Rabenou said. “You’re targeting people with smart ads.”
Photo by Monster Media.
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Jaclyn on February 19th, 2009 8:02 am
While that sounds like a great idea for the companies trying to advertise more effectively and target their proper audience and also track the results of the advertising, still…it seems like a big invasion of privacy to me. and isn’t there some kind of law against taping someone or viewing someone on camera without their consent?
Angela Shupe on February 19th, 2009 8:05 pm
That is definitely an interesting strategy! I can see the potential that is there for gathering data on who might find the most interest in a specific product and vice versa. I wonder how far they’ll go with this idea. Hopefully we won’t have to worry about our televisions watching us in the future.
Mark Bantigue on February 20th, 2009 10:15 am
excellent. it’s like a post-focus group qualitative data gathering. soon, they’ll have profiles of people’s reactions, purchase habits, and stimuli-to-sales profile in databases if/when this technology becomes ubiquitous. think…minority report.
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