England to Roll Out Tailored Billboards
Company to collect information on riders using Wi-Fi to build ‘Minority Report’-like ads
Advances in image-detection software are starting to enliven one of the world’s oldest forms of advertising: the billboard.
Ocean Outdoor U.K. Ltd., one of Britain’s largest digital billboard companies, is rolling out in September an advertising system at the main train station here that will use the technology to help tailor ads to commuters.
Cameras placed in the billboards will capture images of people at the station and beam those back to computers, which will analyze characteristics like gender and age. That will help create ads displayed on the billboards—a series of giant screens atop the station’s busiest entrances.Previously:
The system also beams out free Wi-Fi. In exchange, users agree to share data, which can then help further refine what best to broadcast on the billboards. It will also help select ads the system can push to commuters’ mobile devices.
“If you’re selling a car, and there’s a guy in front of the screen, then you might serve an ad about color, horsepower or engine size,” said Richard Malton, marketing director at Ocean. “But if it’s a woman, it might be about safety.”
Billboard and outdoor-advertising companies have for years gravitated toward digital displays—the sort of moving canvases that light up a chunk of New York City’s Times Square. Now, some digital-billboard companies are taking the next step, embracing today’s new data-collection and data-analysis powers to help select what ads may work best for groups or individuals.
Until recently, the concept has been confined to Hollywood—and long the subject of controversy. In the 2002 film “Minority Report,” Tom Cruise’s character is bombarded by personalized, moving billboard ads after an eye scan.
Ocean’s more basic technology can pick out a few general characteristics from its cameras—such as age, gender and how long a person looks at the advertisement. The system won't be able to recognize the identities of specific people, an Ocean spokeswoman said, because the cameras won't compare its images to any sort of database with personal information. The system isn’t designed to target individuals, but the “wider crowd of individuals within the camera’s range,” and the system doesn’t hold on to images....MORE
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