NEC Ad Watches You Back

In Japan, IT solutions giant NEC has developed a digital signage board containing face recognition technology, which can serve up targeted ad content according to the viewer's gender and age and measure how interested they were in a particular ad.

Using a built-in camera, the new 'eye flavor' system scans the faces of passers-by before they reach the board and then displays tailored ad content.

The system keeps stats of a person's response to particular ads, saving information such as whether the ad was merely glanced at, totally ignored or studied for an extended period of time to gauge its effectiveness. This information is then provided to the advertisers for their own analysis.

To test the software, NEC installed the system at the Granduo shopping mall in Tachikawa, Tokyo, where it recorded the number of viewers, as well as viewing duration of ad content, in terms of time period, gender and age. The distance between the display and the viewers was also measured.

Currently the technology is only programmed for Japanese faces, but the firm is trialling the solution to expand its face recognition abilities. [Fans of The Minority Report will be disappointed to hear that the device does not (yet?) scan the retinas of approaching consumers, call them by name and remind them of the shopping they need / fashions they could be trying - Ed.]

NEC claims that unlike commonly used survey methods, eye flavour obtains ad effectiveness data on a timely basis with more detailed quantitative results.

Web site: www.nec.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.