The New Age of Smart Advertisements

With all of the marketing that goes on around us everyday, it can be pretty easy to tune out all of the ads floating around us. On a daily basis, most people see ads in the form of billboards, commercials, online banner ads, mailing offers, or print ads. Every time we pick up a magazine, ride the subway, drive home from work, or go online there are product advertisements all vying for our attention. But what if each of these ads were actually for things that interested you personally? Would you pay attention more if all the things you saw were products you wanted to buy?

Personalizing advertisements

This is the goal of a new type of billboard advertising created by Immersive Labs. Like something out of a sci-fi movie, these smart billboards use facial recognition to cater ads directly to individuals passing by.

Say a 25-year-old woman walks by one of these ads. It would read her facial features, determine her age and approximate attention span, then present an ad that it thinks would be interesting to her, such as cosmetics or athletic wear. If, a few seconds later, a 50-year-old man passes by, the ad use the same process to switch to a product it thinks would fit his demographic.

Adjusting ads to the environment as well as the viewer

These billboards, along with reading the people that pass by them, are programmed to adjust to changes in time of day, day of the week, or the weather. If it’s a hot day it might display an add for a cool, refreshing drink. The boards are also designed to learn as they go, storing data on what keeps viewer’s attention spans longer and what doesn’t. Taking it a step further, the ads are touch-screen and actually allow viewers to interact with them.

Smart ads – scary or cool?

Personally, I can’t decide if I find this whole thing really interesting or kind of scary. On the one hand, it would be fun to see if these are actually accurate, and can display things that are of interest to me simply based on my age and gender. On the other hand, I don’t know if I necessarily want billboards around me reading my face and trying to get my attention even more so than ads do now. It just seems a little invasive.

The creators of these smart ads have made a point to assure people that these ads will not store any data, or collect any personal information. They will simply take qualitative measurements that keep viewers totally anonymous. Even so, it will be interesting to see if this type of advertising is actually successful, and how it will be received by the general public.

Check out this video of a smart billboard so get a better idea of how these ads work.

Allison Shimp is an intern at Mom Central.

Mom Central