Brands will soon be invading your lounge room and monitoring everything you do, from bathroom breaks to funny facial expressions in order to communicate better with you. This is the future of advertising and it’s a lot closer than could be imagined.
During two big industry events recently, Cannes and the E3 games expo in Los Angeles, major players invested in this new type of monitoring showed their wares. Realeyes, which has come up with technology that tracks facial expressions and Microsoft, who is behind the Kinect system attached to its Xbox 360 and One consoles, both illustrated just how much information they could pick up from watching you.
“When there is an emotional connection, it is so much more likely that engagement will follow,” said Mihkel Jaatma, managing director of Realeyes, during a Cannes speech. Its tracking technology monitors the face and expressions while a consumer is using a computer, enabling brands to get a better read of what they are engaged with.
“Nobody has ever been unwillingly tracked behind the scenes,” he said. “A few things have to play out – people have to opt in, but why would they? It’s all down to people. Users will get different benefits from keeping it on. It’s like cookies. It will be gradual.”
Microsoft’s Kinect system is even more detailed. Attached to the Xbox console in your lounge room, it monitors aspects such as your heart rate, when you leave the room and what exactly you are looking at on screen.
“Our next-generation console enables some very interesting advertising scenarios,” said Microsoft Australia interactive entertainment business lead Jeremy Hinton. “You know who is in the room, the content they have watched, there is an expressions-based system of detection in the new Kinect. We can pick up your heart rate through the micro blood flow in your face. We know if your eyes are open or closed so we can tell dwell time on a tile or window and whether a person keeps coming back and thinking about purchasing.”
It’s great news for marketers, but in light of the PRISM spying revelations by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, this could open a massive can of worms.
This article first appeared in the 12 July 2013 edition of AdNews, in print and on iPad. Click here to subscribe for more news, features and opinion.
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