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NEW YORK, NY -
Watch an advertisement on a video screen in a mall, health club, or grocery store and there's a growing chance the ad is watching you too.
Small cameras can now be embedded in the screen or hidden around it to track who looks at the screen and for how long. The makers say the software can determine the viewer's gender, approximate age range, and, in some cases, ethnicity, and can change the ads accordingly.
When you hear about the technology being tested and used on consumers right now, you might think about the Tom Cruise movie "Minority Report," the futuristic thriller with billboards that recognize your face, then the ads turn into direct electronic pitches of a product specified for you.
That kind of advanced advertising is not too far off, now that companies like "Tru-Media Technologies" have figured out a way to mount cameras inside digital billboards that are programed with face recognition systems for gender and age. The idea is to track how many men and women stop and actually look at the ads and for how long.
The company has 30 installations worldwide. There are only a few in the United States and the ads' locations are not made public. One of the things advertisers hope to use soon, is having the ability to shift their product pitch immediately when one gender or the other gets in the billboard's range. Privacy advocates, though, want people to be informed about what's going on.
"Whatever the audience is in front of the screen, the content will be changed to something appealing to them," said Tony Leger, Tru-Media Technologies.
"Consumers need to know what is happening to their information, who is collecting it, and for what purpose and know whether a certain screen is actually photographing things," said Harley Geiger, Center for Democracy and Technology.
FOX News tested the system with a demo sent by the Tru-Media company. The camera mounted above a computer picked up the reporter and photographer immediately, with green and gray boxes around their faces, which then identified their gender on the screen, and clocked how long they were watching the sample ads.
It's the kind of technology and instant consumer feedback that is golden to advertisers. The cameras don't record any content, so there is no privacy violation, according to Tru-Media, but that's not to say other companies will have the same policy in the future, so it's a technology for people to keep an eye on.
Small cameras can now be embedded in the screen or hidden around it to track who looks at the screen and for how long. The makers say the software can determine the viewer's gender, approximate age range, and, in some cases, ethnicity, and can change the ads accordingly.
When you hear about the technology being tested and used on consumers right now, you might think about the Tom Cruise movie "Minority Report," the futuristic thriller with billboards that recognize your face, then the ads turn into direct electronic pitches of a product specified for you.
That kind of advanced advertising is not too far off, now that companies like "Tru-Media Technologies" have figured out a way to mount cameras inside digital billboards that are programed with face recognition systems for gender and age. The idea is to track how many men and women stop and actually look at the ads and for how long.
The company has 30 installations worldwide. There are only a few in the United States and the ads' locations are not made public. One of the things advertisers hope to use soon, is having the ability to shift their product pitch immediately when one gender or the other gets in the billboard's range. Privacy advocates, though, want people to be informed about what's going on.
"Whatever the audience is in front of the screen, the content will be changed to something appealing to them," said Tony Leger, Tru-Media Technologies.
"Consumers need to know what is happening to their information, who is collecting it, and for what purpose and know whether a certain screen is actually photographing things," said Harley Geiger, Center for Democracy and Technology.
FOX News tested the system with a demo sent by the Tru-Media company. The camera mounted above a computer picked up the reporter and photographer immediately, with green and gray boxes around their faces, which then identified their gender on the screen, and clocked how long they were watching the sample ads.
It's the kind of technology and instant consumer feedback that is golden to advertisers. The cameras don't record any content, so there is no privacy violation, according to Tru-Media, but that's not to say other companies will have the same policy in the future, so it's a technology for people to keep an eye on.
