In The Sunday Times newspaper yesterday was an article on a new technology which will change the way we advertise using digital display systems. The technology scans your face then will tailor adverts in reference to your gender, age or mood. This takes target marketing to a whole new level. Far away from the mass targeting approach in the Mad Men days of the 1960s.
The company 3MGTG who created the product gives a few examples of how this new innovative technology will work. An example is given of a middle aged man who walks past a chemist where a digital display in the window catches his eye. A hidden camera in the display scans his face using facial-recognition software and registers his mature years and subsequently displays a hair dye product promotion. As the man’s wife peers into the window with a furrowed brow, after suffering a headache all day, the technology duly presents her with an advertisement for painkillers, conveniently pinpointing their location in store. A launch within clothing retail is planned, where it will recommend items depending on how it identifies its target.
The system can recognise within seconds four types of emotional state: angry, sad, happy and surprised as well as 35 categories of age, working within a 16ft range. When the system has identified an emotional state it gives a strength/weakness percentage of the detected emotion (as seen in picture above). Launching in the UK within the next 12 months, a similar technology was released in Japan last year.
In advertising, we cleverly target ads to specific markets all the time. However it is never done with such precision or in a way that is so obvious to the consumer. Could there be an invasion of privacy issue here?
