As advertising connects more and more with technology, it only makes sense that it is going to become more intelligent and reactive to how we’re feeling and what we’re looking for. This news should come as no surprise to people who are interested in both advertising, technology, and how they can intersect to promote products and ideas more effectively based on someone’s emotions. It was only a matter of time before advertisers began using facial recognition technology to target specific types of ads and the attitudes within them to the consumers mood and behavior.
Advertiser M&C Saatchi is currently behind this latest experiment in advertising techniques and technology. Using Microsoft Kinect cameras hidden within billboards, the advertiser is trying to read the emotions on a persons face and react accordingly to whether the person is happy, sad, or neutral. This is a truly next-step venture for both advertising and the algorithms used by the camera and program to choose the right advertisement based on facial expression. The advertisements will change the images, designs, fonts, and colors based on the persons expression. The algorithms needed to make this happen are incredibly complex and need to be able to read a host of different data, sift through all of the options, and choose the right ones for maximum effect, all within the blink of an eye.
As I mentioned above, these sorts of billboards are the future of ads that are on public streets and they require intensely complicated algorithms to make them happen. This sort of technology might begin with advertising, but the limits are endless and both the facial-recognition technology and the algorithms used to choose aspects of the advertisement can be applied to a host of other commercial, domestic, and possibly even military uses. However, before we can even get to the possible uses for this tech, we still need to make sure it can work on something as simple as selling products to consumers.
If you’d like to read more, the link is here.