The Eyes Have It

Japanese Billboards Are Watching Back
In Japan, NTT is testing a digital billboard system that watches back
Martyn Williams, IDG News Service
Friday, December 12, 2008 01:10 AM PST

"On many street corners and railway stations there are many digital signs," said Tetsuya Kinebuchi, a senior research engineer at NTT's Cyber Space Laboratories and developer of the system. "To automatically measure the effectiveness of the advertisements we can put a camera and PC nearby, and by using the image from the camera we can estimate how many people are looking at the monitor."

Interesting. I've always wondered about the effectiveness of such advertising. Does it really accomplish anything beyond generating simple name recognition among the public and a steady income for otherwise useless marketers? What is the ratio of nuisanse to profit? Outdoor advertising frequently doesn't make it past my background noise filters.

Computer and television ads are a little more problematic. I make a point of not looking at the images on pop-up ads. Whatever slips past my pop-up killer gets killed while I focus my eyes on something else. I don't want to encourage them. I record almost everything I watch on TV so that I can skip the commercials. Product placements don't offend me as long as they aren't too obvious or distracting, but I hate those banners and pop ups that many channels have adopted.

The system has its limits. It doesn't seek to identify individuals -- NTT is worried about the negative implications of such a system -- but it will attempt to figure out how many of the people standing in front of an advertisement are actually looking at it.

That might be true during the beta, perhaps even during the first few production iterations. It won't stay true for long, though. If the technology exists, big brother will find a way to use it. The advertisers will tweak their displays to force more passers-by to look, and power hungry statists everywhere will drool over the added potential for herd control.