Is this creepy, or is this creepy? Cameras placed inside billboard advertisements that read your demographic information when you're looking at it and send it back to the advertisers. It also apparently shows you a different ad, based on that info, than it will show someone else. This reminds me of that Tom Cruise movie Minority Report (I think it was Minority Report), where advertisements are all digital and they do an automatic retina scan when you walk by so they're personalized to you. (Imagine a 3D digital ad saying "Hey, Jenni, want to lose that belly fat?" EW!)
I know this isn't quite so severe as all that, but still. Creepy. They claim that they don't actually take pictures of the people, so there's no personally identifying information. However, they are just a tweak away from doing so if the mood (or court order) strikes. Also a tweak away is targeting race on top of age and gender (which they are actually trying to do). Of course, all the advertising execs are giggling with glee and rubbing their hands together as we speak. Now not only can they track our every move online, but they can track us on the street as well.
One potentially entertaining aspect of all this is the fact that they use things like the cheekbone height and distance between nose and mouth to measure gender and age. For the more androgenous among us, it could be wildly entertaining to see what kind of "personally targeted" advertisements you get!
For people who want to learn, grow, get inspired, and stay silly.
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