THIRD ANNUAL SCREENS ISSUE - MediaPost

OUT-OF-HOME
Four years after billboards
like this one, equipped
with cameras and facial
recognition software,
started a privacy panic,
the industry still hasn’t
calmed concerns
Advertising gets its share of bad PR, but some
incidents stand out as particularly extra-bad.
Back in March 2008, an article in The New
York Times drew readers’ attention to new
biometric technology that enabled cameras in
digital out-of-home displays to scan dozens
of facial features to determine demographic
information about passers-by including their
age, race and gender, which in turn allowed
computers to target advertising to them based
on these factors. For example, a digital outof-home
display employing the technology
might “show one advertisement to a middleaged
white woman … and a different one to a
teenage Asian boy,” according to the article,
provocatively (and not inaccurately) titled
“Billboards That Look Back.”
Face
Time on
Hold
Whatever happened to the
facial recognition trend in digital
out-of-home?
BY ERIK SASS
Public reaction to the
article was entirely predictable,
which is to say almost
entirely bad. The issue which
immediately leapt to mind
for most people was privacy:
Should advertisers be able to
collect such personal infor-
mation without your permission
or even knowledge? Yes,
pundits conceded, individuals
moving in public spaces
are probably fair game, but
still — it’s just creepy. And
that kind of thing matters (or
at least, should matter) to
Spring 2012 MEDIA MAGAZINE 33