Coming Soon: Your Face On Demographic Marketing Data

Advertisers and retailers already know their customers' ages, genders, what they buy and perhaps how much money they earn and whether they have children, but what if they could add shoppers' faces to those data profiles and use it to display advertisements meant just for them.

Facial recognition software would make it possible. Brian Mennecke, an associate professor of information systems at Iowa State University, said most of us aren't ready for that type of privacy invasion, but the day that shoppers will walk past a digital sign with a display that changes to an advertisement meant just for them isn't so far away.

Facebook can already scan photos while users upload new ones and suggest the proper tag and Google image search makes identifying a photo of a stranger possible.

Another company, Intel, offers “anonymous video analytics” that allow retailers to analyze in-store video cameras to identify customer demographics such as race, ethnicity and more, Mennecke said.

Intel also builds sign displays that record general characteristics about the person looking at the screen.

Right now the systems are designed to be anonymous.

“However, to provide useful information, they must capture data that can be used to build a profile of the target. Of course, customer profiling is not new, but what is unique about these systems is the fact that the profile now includes a multidimensional digital representation of the user’s physical appearance and biometrics, as well as the viewer’s behaviors in the context of their interactions with the display,” Mennecke wrote in an article “Avatars to Mavtars” published in Business Horizons journal.

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In South Korea, digital displays use cameras to estimate the viewer's gender and age, according to “Big Brother, Now at the Mall” published in the Wall Street Journal in October 2012.

At the time the story was written, the sign's maker planned to build a system that would allow the machines to present tailor made advertising.

“A 40-something man looking up a restaurant on the kiosk may be shown an ad for a steakhouse in the mall, while a 20-something woman might get one for a clothing store,” the article said.

The signs were expected to be operational by early 2013.

And in the U.S. a company was “marketing a system for retailers and restaurants” that would offer deals to customers picked up on facial recognition cameras, reported the Wall Street Journal.

Mennecke said he envisions opt-in type marketing in the future where customers will be asked for permission to scan their faces in return for other rewards and smartphone applications that would have the ability to scan someone's face and then “ identify who they are.”

Read Mennecke's discussion about the benefits and risks of facial recognition technology at Iowa State News.