14 DAY TRIAL // It's common knowledge that animated ads are there for your entertainment, and that everyone would rather see relevant content about products they are looking for rather than unrelated commercials. Now, advertising companies are refining a system that will make customizable ads a reality, via the use of sophisticated software and video cameras, strategically placed anywhere around animated billboards.
The cameras are reportedly so good that they can identify a viewer's age, gender or even ethnicity, depending on the distance they are from the ads. Besides the fact that people will be able to view relevant content for their searches while at the mall, or other shopping centers, companies will have a golden opportunity to see just how much their campaigns appeal to their target audiences.
Advertising firms say that the new technology will most likely progress very much until the end of the current year, and estimate that the top 10 markets will be saturated with this type of animated ads by December 2009. “This is proactive merchandising. You're targeting people with smart ads,” says TruMedia Technologies Inc. chief measurement officer Vicki Rabenou. The Tampa, Florida-based company is one of the leaders in developing the new technology.
To answer growing criticism coming from citizens, the developers of the new technology claim that no personal information is ever recorded or sent to a third-party. In other words, the camera will solely be used to forward the images to a microprocessor, which will then analyze them and determine relevant information about the people watching the ads. All prominent facial features will be pinpointed as accurately as possible, and then cross-referenced to a database containing faces of randomly-selected men and women, to determine the viewer's gender.
When it comes to age, however, the system can only approximate within broader ranges, such as children, teens, middle-aged people and seniors, and display ads accordingly. Larger groups also pose a challenge for the intelligent displays because they have to create a mean age and gender, and have to find ads that fit these groups.