“The technology ‘actually recognizes faces. If you raise your eyebrow, it can track that,’ says Jonathon Nelson, chief executive at Omnicon Digital.” This quote is from the article The Billboard That Knows in today’s Wall Street Journal and suggests that yet another one of my predictions for 2011 is on pace to occur. Here is what I wrote this past December:
#3: Interactive billboards will be coming to a store near you in 2011– and they will target you. Employing the latest facial recognition technology and utilizing sophisticated algorithms, these billboards will detect your age and gender and then, using the time of day and your location, deliver an advertisement designed for you. Privacy advocates will decry the event but since the technology only uses generic information (the technology does not recognize individual faces), most major retailers will be comfortable employing the technology.
Interested in seeing how some of Futurist Jack Uldrich’s other past predictions have panned out? Check out these recent posts:
Flying into the Future with Robots
The Education Industry Needs to Wake Up to the Future
In the Future, It’s Going to Get Very Crowd-Sourced
Chevy Has Its Pulse on the Future
