By now, we’re all used to getting web ads with some degree of personalization – at a minimum, age and gender, and often much more. Now, a similar level of targeting may be coming to a store near you. The big British retailer Tesco is installing screens in its gas stations that will scan your face and deliver demographically targeted ads. If this reminds you of the 2002 science-fiction thriller Minority Report , be aware that even the developers of the system acknowledge the similarity.
Screen scans customer face to target ads (Photo Credit: Amscreen)
The technology comes from Amscreen, who says that it is the first national rollout of the firm’s OptimEyes audience measurement technlogy. The BBC reports,
Tesco says the screens will be rolled out across all of its 450 forecourts in the UK.
“It’s like something out of Minority Report,” said Amscreen’s chief executive Simon Sugar, Lord Sugar’s eldest son.
“But this could change the face of British retail, and our plans are to expand the screens into as many supermarkets as possible.” [From Tesco petrol stations use face-scan tech to target ads.]
At least for now, the screens won’t use facial recognition or other technology to identify specific consumers. It seems like only a matter of time, though, before someone uses facial recognition, cell phone data, etc. to deliver individually targeted ads. Retargeting could be one application – after interacting with a website, you might see ads related to the product you looked at or left in your shopping cart.
Targeted ads are always a tradeoff – while few people want to see ads for products they have no use for and will never buy, seeing ads for a product you glanced at a few days ago can seem rather stalker-ish.
Another privacy concern is that if full facial recognition was implemented in the future, one’s shopping history could be documented and tracked just like one’s web browsing history. Spend a minute at the fragrance counter at Macy’s, and the next day see an ad for Euphoria on your phone the next day? That’s not out of the question, and it could be accomplished by other means (e.g., cell phone tracking), too.
What do you think – does this technology seem creepy, or will it improve your shopping experience by delivering relevant content and deals? Leave a comment with your thoughts.
Roger Dooley is the author of Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing (Wiley, 2011). Find Roger on Twitter as @rogerdooley and at his website, Neuromarketing.
from Forbes.com: Most popular stories http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerdooley/2013/11/05/amscreen-tesco/
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