Advertising Just Got Creepier

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

From today's Globe. Can't say I like the implications of this technology.

Eye-catching glance at the future

Billboard-mounted device that tracks eyeball movement is turning heads in the advertising community

CHARLES MANDEL

Globe and Mail Update

June 28, 2007 at 12:01 AM EDT

"Whatcha looking at?" Madonna barked in her 1990s hit single, Vogue. That same question is something sign companies and their customers would love to know.

Up until now, it's been nearly impossible to properly weigh the value of advertisement signs and billboards. How do you tell if anyone is actually even looking at them? Hermes Iordanous, president of Toronto-based Novramedia, a digital signage producer with roughly 10,000 signs up worldwide, sums up the problem: "I know how to analyze the data, but if I don't have the data, I can't do anything."

According to Mr. Iordanous, advertisers need to find a way to measure the effects of digital signs because that's the only way to demonstrate to the client that the money they spend really counts.

All that may become a sight easier, so to speak, with new technology developed by a Queen's University professor, Dr. Roel Vertegaal.

The eyebox2 is a portable device, which would be attached to a sign, that monitors eye movements and automatically detects when a pair of peepers is looking at the ad from as far as 10 metres away. Meanwhile, a passive sensor counts how many people have looked at the ad and for how long.

The $999 camera comes housed in a box about the size of a webcam and, unlike previous models of the eyebox, does not need calibration to function, does not require people to remain stationary and costs a fraction of the first model's $25,000 price tag.

Dr. Vertegaal, the director of Queen's Human Media Laboratory and CEO of Xuuk Inc. (a startup partnered with the university's technology transfer office), has shown his invention to Google Inc.

"I can't comment on where Google is going to go next, whether they're going to move into the real world, which was the topic of my presentation, but they're definitely interested in this," Dr. Vertegaal says.

It makes sense that the California-based search and advertising giant is examining the professor's technology. In fact, it makes AdSense: Just as Google's contextual advertising on Web pages delivers targeted messages based on where consumers surf online, a future version of eyebox2 could conceivably help AdSense do the same in the real world.

Since Dr. Vertegaal announced his device in early May, expressions of interest in the technology have come from several dozen companies. "I've lost count," Dr. Vertegaal says. "We went from zero hits on this technology to 311,000 in six days. We're sitting on a volcano and I'm trying to manage it."

Kevin Heisler, a research analyst with Jupiter Research in New York, calls the technology a major breakthrough in terms of the cost-effectiveness of measuring the effectiveness of advertising. Currently, any such measurements are based on overall traffic and location, not who is actually looking at the ads.

"If you think about the ability to see and measure human behaviour, I think this is probably the closest anyone has come to measuring in-store behaviour and noticing what people are looking at when they're walking through a mall or how they're going to make decisions about where they're going to go," Mr. Heisler says.

"It has tremendous opportunities," adds Mr. Heisler, who believes the eyebox2 would work well in the real world with Google's auction model, whereby companies would bid on signs and then have them electronically updated to serve consumers with relevant ads.

"We briefed a major client on this very issue and technology earlier this year. We certainly think it is a growth area and has lots of potential for the future."

Dr. Vertegaal said the eyebox2 does not identify the specific individual looking at a sign, something that Mr. Iordanous finds reassuring. "One thing I loved is that it is non-intrusive," Mr. Iordanous says. "It's just counting the number of eyes. There's nothing to identify the person who is looking at it, which to me satisfies all my client requirements."

Nor does Mr. Iordanous believe it necessary to purchase an eyetracker2 for every single sign location. Rather, he says he might place the devices at 10 or 20 specific locations he wished to count for clients wanting to know the effectiveness of their ads.

Tracking eyes isn't the only thing Dr. Vertegaal has been working on. One of his key interests is in how people interact with computers. Some other devices he has developed, but not yet commercialized, include a cellphone that gauges whether you're speaking to another person and can shut off so it doesn't interrupt the conversation; and a television that pauses when no one is watching it. Dr. Vertegaal refers to it as a television that watches you watching it.

"The reason we're moving into ambient advertising first is because there is a definite market there. Everybody is waiting for the technology. With the other applications, we need to push the price point down further to get there."

[Esau.]