Japan Railway Companies Launch Digital Signage Promotion Project

In June, a con­sor­tium of 11 rail­way com­pa­nies launched a one-year pilot project called the Digital Signage Promotion Project (DSPP). DSPP includes 27 dig­i­tal sig­nage dis­plays in sub­way com­muter sta­tions around Tokyo. These dis­plays are equipped with cam­eras that feed infor­ma­tion for gen­der and age analy­sis to gen­er­ate tar­geted com­mer­cial mes­sages. The per­son has to look at the dig­i­tal sig­nage dis­play only for a second.

The goals is to improve adver­tise­ments based on sex and age. Privacy can be an issue but indi­vid­u­als are not iden­ti­fied and only demo­graphic data are col­lected. Recorded images are not saved. Of course, the enhance­ment of such sys­tems with record­ing capa­bil­ity and indi­vid­ual iden­ti­fi­ca­tion recog­ni­tion is not too dif­fi­cult. I won­der how effect sex- and age-based adver­tise­ments are… in a train sta­tion. Isn’t every­one busy try­ing to get some­where or meet some­one? Is this group the type that would be respon­sive to tar­geted adver­tise­ments? Maybe if it helped them get to where they want to be and meet the peo­ple they want to meet. Source: AFP