Minority Report is here (Almost)

Did you ever see Minority Report, with Tom Cruise? I have always found the advertising in that movie fascinating because the concept is that all of the ads in any media - be they newspaper or out-of-home digital boards - change for you. That's right. The ad that you walk past in the mall is targeted at you personally. The concept is based on the idea that each media scans your retinas and can identify you, and is smart enough to advertise to you.

Online advertising has gotten close to that with Behavioral Targeting through Advertising Networks (like Advertising.com and Casale). The premise on which these networks operate is that they are able to watch the sites that a computer is browsing. Based on that, they can determine the types of things the person who is surfing is interested in. For instance, let's say that you are surfing automobile sites, and let's say that you tend to look at mini-van information. Suddenly through simple tracking mechanisms the advertising networks can determine that you are probably interested in a mini-van. So, if one of their Advertisers is trying to advertise their particular mini-van, you suddenly find that a lot of the advertising space on the internet (i.e. lots of inventory that the particular Network has purchased) seems to be educating you about that particular mini-van. It is magic.

Well - hang onto your eyeballs - now it looks like Out-of-Home Digital Video Boards may have that similar capabilities being built into them. The Globe and Mail reported today that small cameras can now be embedded in the screen of a small digital video board and can track who looks at the screen and for how long. The makers of the tracking systems say the software can determine the viewer's gender, approximate age range and, in some cases, ethnicity – and can change the ads accordingly. In practice however, it looks like for the near term if the system can simply determine the gender the system will be doing very well.

That could mean razor ads for men, cosmetics ads for women and video-game ads for teens.

And even if the ads don't shift based on which people are watching, the technology's ability to determine the viewers' demographics is golden for advertisers who want to know how effectively they're reaching their target audience.

While the technology remains in limited use for now, advertising industry analysts say it is finally beginning to live up to its promise. The manufacturers say their systems can accurately determine gender 85 to 90 per cent of the time, while accuracy for the other measures continues to be refined.

Leaders in the field appear to be:

• TruMedia Technologies Inc., Florida
  
• Quividi, France
• Studio IMC Inc., New York