What is intelligent advertising?

Feb 21, 2012

A new advert changes according to who is looking at it.

There are hundreds of adverts on London’s Oxford Street, but the one being unveiled by a bus-stop this week will look a little bit different – depending on if you’re male or female. Commissioned by the Plan UK charity, the electronic advert contains a camera and facial recognition software which scans the faces of passers-by to work out their sex. If a woman is watching they are shown a 40 second message for the charity’s Because I Am A Girl campaign, which highlights the fact that 75 million girls around the world are not in school. Men, however, will not be able to see the full advert but will just be directed to the charity’s website ‘so they can see what it’s like to have basic choices taken away’ a Plan UK spokesperson said.

Although this is the first ‘intelligent’ advert in Britain, the technology has already been used in America and Japan, and some experts are now saying ‘intelligent’ adverts could soon be very common, as advertisers could create adverts which would show individual shoppers what they would look like wearing certain clothes, for example.