Japan launches billboards that can read your mind

Imagine a billboard that can read your age and what soft drinks you like just by looking at you. Billboard advertising, after falling a little behind in the ‘cool’ stakes of the ad world lately, is coming up with some pretty nifty that take ‘interactive’ and ‘digital’ to a whole new level.

Japan is taking the lead when it comes t billboard advertising. It is developing flat-screen monitors used like billboards and is incorporating mobile phone technologies to make them more interactive.

Inside the bustling Shinagawa train station, a futuristic-looking vending machine has replaced rows of drink bottles and cans with a 47-inch touch-screen monitor.

When a person stands in front of the screen, a camera captures his image and a sensor determines the person’s gender and approximate age.

Based on that reading, the machine “recommends” drinks that fit the customer’s profile.

The idea is to transform billboards and the like into sophisticated marketing tools that identify and target a specific audience.

NEC, the third-largest maker of public displays, behind Panasonic and Samsung, is using facial-recognition technology that can determine how many people looked at a particular display, their gender and even their level of attentiveness.

NEC said the technology allows advertisers to gather hard data about the display’s effectiveness.

The company says its system can identify people’s gender correctly about 90% of the time and guess a person’s age within a 10-year range about 70% of the time.

But the technology raises privacy concerns — as does everything that has to with advertising these days, it seems.

The problem is that there’s no clear regulation that prohibits those signage systems from storing images.

The protection of personal privacy depends too much on the conscience of each company involved.

The question is though, is this sort of advertising fool proof? Or is it just another advertiser trying to convince us we want something we don’t actually need?

Tell us your thoughts.