Quividi Digital Billboards Watch You And Change To Suit Your Likely Wants

No that is not a joke. I heard about this on the blog DoshDosh and had to tell you about it. There are now billboards courtesy of a company called Quividi. DoshDosh references an article in The London Times which I will excerpt here:

Whereas advertisers were once happy simply to place posters for doughnuts near police stations, they now insist on knowing who is viewing their adverts. Companies such as Quividi, a French marketing technology firm, are happy to oblige.

Quividi installs camera systems in billboards and a computer analyses passers-by. “We know this many people have walked in front of the screen, how many turned to face the ad, and how long they looked at it,” says Paolo Prandoni, Quividi’s chief scientific officer. “We can even tell their gender with an accuracy of 85% and measure who approaches to find out more.”

Quividi has digital adverts that change depending on whether a man or woman is watching and is working on upgrading its system to detect different ages and even family groups. The company insists no data are permanently recorded.

There's a video that dramatizes the recognition technology here. Quividi's core business is in outdoor audience measurement.



Dosh Dosh reports that the Quividi gender identifier is 85% accurate, proving that Pat has struck again...



Another company profiled was Holosonic, which is a US outfit that beams sound into a small area from 60 feet away.



Interesting illustration, though I would imagine that one more then one occasion this technology will result in corpses in the sound zone, dead from fright. And dead people cannot buy Cokes.

The effect, the company claims, is to “startle and entertain” pedestrians without being audible to anyone outside the zone.

Startling I accept.



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