Kindgo
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The Billboards know what radio station you are listening to.
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http://www.techtv.com/news/scitech/...3411486,00.html
Drive-by Advertising
New electronic billboards tailor advertising to passing motorists.
By Lindsay Martell, Tech Live
In the film Minority Report, electronic signs greet shoppers by name and exuberantly chirp customer service speak directly to them.
This was Hollywood's spin on a technology that really is gaining speed in Sacramento, California. New electronic video billboards stand tall over freeways there, tailoring their advertisements to match the personalities of the passing motorists. Take a spin past these billboards with "Tech Live" tonight.
"Instead of a static billboard, we can have a target that moves," explains Tom Langeland, CEO of Alaris Media Networks, the operation behind the signs.
High tech slide show
Alaris owns and operates 10 e-billboards in California. The billboards are able to take note of the radio station you're listening to when you drive by.
"When you're listening to a radio station, the antenna on your car picks up the frequency from the transceiver," Langeland explains. "There is a leakage coming from your antenna that this very sensitive sensor that's mounted on our signs will pick up from about 60 percent of the cars passing by."
And if about 60 percent of the cars that drive by at any given time are driven by people listening to, say, a rock station, then the billboard, through a series of computerized operations, can pull up customized ads based on demographic data provided by the radio stations.
The result is an ongoing high tech slide show of advertisements designed to match the interests of the passers-by.
Privacy invasion?
Alaris uses special software to disseminate the incoming data before Langeland and his team use the findings for market research.
The information that's beamed from the sensors to the computers doesn't include anybody's private information. It's just used to find out what people are listening to so the billboards can target ads to the drivers.
The boards are very bright and lit by massive, powerful LEDs. New ads appear on the billboards every seven seconds.
"This enables us to really do some in-depth, down-drilling, market research to age, gender -- whatever demographic there is," Langeland says.
Drivers not bothered
Alaris' aim is to get a thumbprint of listening habits of commuters such as Erin Tognetti, who turns her dial to sports talk and news radio when she gets behind the wheel.
Langeland says this is critical information for Alaris' biggest clients -- casinos such as the Peppermill, supermarkets, car dealerships, and, not surprisingly, radio stations.
Langeland says it's all done without invading anyone's privacy.
"We get a profile of a group of people," he says. "We'll never get a profile of you."
Tognetti, who passes the signs every day, says they can be distracting because of the brilliance of the lights. But she's not uncomfortable with their tracking capabilities, she says.
"They don't know who I am," she says as she drives onto a street in downtown Sacramento. "It's not as if they have cameras that record my license plate number. I'm not being tracked or cataloged or anything like that. So because of that they don't really bother me."
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God bless,
Kindgo
Inside the will of God there is no failure. Outside the will of God there is no success.
Posts: 4320 | From: Sunny Florida | Registered: Jun 2002
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