Directed Advertising Proof of Concept

Directed or targeted advertising is common place in the on-line shopping environment but is less known in the out-of-home (OOH) shopping experience where technical challenges are more complex. This application presents an exciting opportunity to use 2D and 3D image recognition technology for the capture of information from passerby individuals (or group of individuals) and will provide analysis/metrics about consumer demographics and behaviour for use in automated targeted marketing campaigns. Our technology will make no attempt to recognise individuals and all image data will be treated as metadata which will be used for analysis but will not be stored. Application of 2D and 3D analysis in the outdoor advertising sector is novel and beyond the current state-of-the-art. Addressing this area is also timely, as this is a developing market where technological advances are rapidly taking place.

We will develop and test a basic prototype using state-of-the-art 2D and 3D imaging
approaches to establish the feasibility for gathering accurate human demographic (gender, age) and behavioural (head movements, eye gazing transitions) information (to assess engagement / interest in digital adverts). We will also demonstrate a capability for the automatically captured information to be used to intelligently adapt the advertising content in real-time in order to maximise consumer engagement. We will work closely with billboard and advertising companies as well as consumers to test our product.
Automatic recognition of demographic and gaze data in real-world environments presents many challenges. Aralia has already made steps towards developing systems in this area in relation to surveillance and also has clear presence in the application market to ensure access routes to marketing and advertising sectors.