Advertisers are always trying to find the golden formula to target their customers. Cookies and demographical data is being used online, but due to technological innovations that have made facial recognition possible we are also able to target our customers better outdoors. While waiting for the train, there is a great possibility that a smart billboard is watching you. Are you looking at its advertisement or not? And if so, for how long
Cameras in billboards are becoming more and more common. The software being used can identify the age and sex of a person, identify their emotion and even recognize an individual. Since advertising is all about emotions, it is very useful for the advertiser to identify whether the person looking at the billboard is happy, surprised, angry, etc. They can use this data to investigate their target group and make their advertisements more effective.
Besides offering new insights and data, face recognition in billboards is taken up to the next level and is being used to make billboard advertising interactive. For example, Coca-Cola uses facial recognition in interactive billboards at the metro station in Stockholm. As part of the ‘Choose Happiness’ campaign, billboards analyzed the faces of the metro passengers. When a passenger passed by the billboard and smiled, the face of the interactive billboard advertisement winked and smiled back at the passenger. (Rozema, R. 2016).
Another example is the German beer brand Astra, who is using facial recognition to distinguish men from women. The goal of the outdoor advertisement is to encourage women to drink beer. Depending on the person passing by, one of the 70 available videos is being showed. If the billboard recognized a man or a minor, it asks the person to keep on walking. If it is a female, the billboard shows a fun video (Rozema, R. 2016).
These new technologies open up endless possibilities for outdoor advertising, but privacy must be warranted. The civil rights organization ‘Bits of Freedom’, for example, thinks that facial recognition in billboards used in public transportation is a problem, since it is a public area and passengers cannot avoid the cameras (Schellevis, J.). However, as with many technological developments, there are no clear regulations yet and the law is still behind (Rozema, R. 2016). It is unknown how far legislation for personalized advertisement will go in the future. Are interactive billboards allowed to send a push notification to your smartphone? If billboards are able to identify the person that is coming, are they allowed to register you? Maybe the technology will eventually lead to ultra-targeted advertising: what if you load up thousands of videos of people wearing different clothes and match this data to whatever the person looking at the advertisement is wearing? ‘Beautiful dress you’re wearing. Maybe this jacket will look nice with it; only 20euro at Zara!’
Concluding, technological innovations have enabled advertising companies to analyze images and use this data in order to make their advertisements more effective. Besides that, outdoor advertising is taken to the next level with interactive billboards. How far will these innovations go, without violating privacy?
References:
Rozema, R. (2017). Oprukkende gezichtsherkenning past reclame aan | Marketing trends en nieuws. [online] Available at: https://www.frank.news/2016/02/05/oprukkende-gezichtsherkenning-past-reclame-aan-2/ [Accessed 3 Oct. 2017].
Schellevis, J. (2017). Reclameborden op A’dam CS weten wanneer en hoelang jij kijkt. [online] Available at: https://nos.nl/artikel/2191341-reclameborden-op-a-dam-cs-weten-wanneer-en-hoelang-jij-kijkt.html [Accessed 3 Oct. 2017].
This is an interesting topic! I have never noticed that the billboard can actually recognize people before. It seems that now people are very transparent to the public. I have a similar example to the German beer example. In Norway, there is a restaurant using facial recognition technology and install a hidden camera on a screen. So when a men come, the screen will advertise pizza, while a women come, the screen will advertise salads. This method can be more efficient for advertising, but how can the billboard judge that the women indeed want a salad? It seems that in this way, the advertising is limiting the potential sales. A woman is very possible to eat a pizza. Therefore, if the screen only shows salad, then the restaurant may miss a potential customer. In my opinion, for a restaurant, distinguishing advertisements from women to man might not work that efficient since people have different food preference regardless of gender. About the privacy, in my opinion, although legal regulation is urgent for protecting people’s privacy, it can be very difficult to come up a legal document for facial recognition technology. Because the company is not using it for commercial purpose and people does not notice that actually they are recognizing their faces. Technology development can be along with privacy problem, in the current stage, privacy protection is way less than enough. We are living in a full transparent environment. We all know that the camera on our laptop can be accessed by the laptop company, even a third party; so others can see what you are doing through the camera without your permission. However, we cannot do anything through legal channel to protect our privacy. Therefore, instead of legal issues, people should emphasize more on ethical issue on this kind of technology.
(About the restaurant example, you can find more information on this website:https://theoutline.com/post/1528/this-pizza-billboard-used-facial-recognition-tech-to-show-women-ads-for-salad)
Hi Charlotte,
Very interesting read! Thank you for sharing on this topic. Privacy is certainly a major concern in many modern forms of advertising given the capabilities our technology has now to track and monitor consumers. I’m curious about your thoughts on how this type of advertising compares with the tracking and monitoring capabilities in online advertising where Google is able to scan through your e-mails for keywords or websites are able to cookie your browsing for insights on visitors. Are these privacy concerns of the same scale? Or do you see the inclusion of a camera as more intrusive? And how do you think advertisers can continue to utilize this technology without violating users’ privacy?
Hi Charlotte,
Thank you for writing and sharing this article! I was not aware of cameras in some billboard and find it very interesting how advertisers use this technology to gain information. Do you know if this happens in other countries as well? I tried to do some research, but could not find anything yet. In general, I am also very curious to see how new laws will evolve around new technologies being developed. Current technology changes are happing so quickly that it is almost impossible to keep up. The article I added gives an interesting insight about whether the legal system is moving quickly enough to keep up with advances in technology. The author argues that people overstate the extent to which the law needs to be changed. However, I think it is extremely important to keep reflecting the current laws and make adjustments accordingly to protect the privacy of people.
https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2015/feb/11/laws-change-new-technology
Hi Charlotte, super interesting post you got there.
Personally, I am really interested in these kinds of technological advancements. I think using technological innovations over human rights for the sake of profits is an inevitable process that is going to happen any way. Lets be honest, in the end all will be invented if it can generate money. And in most cases this is not even a bad thing, because most inventions actually produce really great benefits for the people. Think of all the technological improvements in the medical industry for example. But, regarding these kind of technological improvements in the marketing industry.. well frankly, that scares me a bit.
I don’t know if you have ever read the book 1984, in which the world was predicted in 1984 as the writer (George Orwell) thought it would be when he wrote it back in 1948. He thought the whole world would be watched by the government and if a person would not comply with the policy of this government, they would notice and you would be ‘punished’. In the book the famous words came: Big Brother Is Watching You. This represented the idea that big brother (the government) can always see what ‘their’ people can do and therefor having ultimate control over humans. Now I know that having billboards watching you is not quite the same, but it’s fair enough to point out that these might be the first technological advancements that can ultimately be used by the government (or CIA/NASA/etc.) to spy on people. Who says these billboards can not be used and controlled by third parties? I am not saying they are right now, but if these billboards are internationally accepted and being used all over the world, than that might be the beginning of big brother… can’t it?