Vincent Serpico, Vice President of Development

There’s been a lot of buzz about facial recognition in a digital signage. To some, it sounds a bit “big brother” and to others, it sounds like a pretty cool technology. Most marketers and companies exploring ways to improve their digital signage systems just want to know what it is and what it isn’t.

First, let’s imagine this scenario. A 35-year old female walks into a clothing store, and the sales rep greets her, “Hello, sir. We have a wide assortment of trousers for men over 65.” Well of course that would never happen because a live sales rep would be able to identify that this is a young woman.

However, this scenario happens all the time with digital signage. That is, a digital signage display will attempt to either target a wide array of customers, hence not really identifying with any specific target market; or focus on a specific segment, thereby alienating all other target markets. Neither approach is effective and at best attracts a small percentage of total viewers.

Facial recognition in a digital signage system solves this age-old dilemma once and for all.

A small, unobtrusive camera is placed inside a digital signage display. The camera sends images of the viewer to software that identifies the viewer’s age range and gender. The information is then sent to the digital signage player, which displays content based on the viewer. So a 35-year old female will see a clothing ad that is much different than what is shown to a 70-year old male.

When Flypaper demoed its facial recognition integration with Intel’s Aim Suite at DSE in February, the response was overwhelmingly positive, and surprising. While we expected to hear that folks felt Flypaper’s facial recognition was simple and easy to use, and could save a ton of marketing dollars, we were very surprised to hear the “customers view.” That is, we heard again and again that from a customer perspective, they were happy to see ads targeted at them, versus “throw and stick” ads. I mean, how many times have you seen an ad that had absolutely nothing to do with you and wasted your time? Every day?

Facial recognition in a digital signage system helps to minimize “throw and stick” advertising.

But while facial recognition can display target content, we must keep in mind that consumers are in control. That is, with the advent of active participation in adverting, consumers must be allowed to ultimately choose the content they view. Flypaper suggests creating interactive touch-screens that allow the viewer to navigate the content displayed to him or her. In other words, present the viewer targeted content, but then allow them to navigate and choose how they ultimately decide to interact with the content through a touch interface. Flypaper has thought this through and baked interaction into its entire core Components with the simple click of a checkbox.

Facial recognition is here, folks. You’re going to see it more and more. Start investigating it now. By the 2012 DSE, you’re going to see a lot more vendors demoing facial recognition. You’re also going to see a lot more commercial digital signage displays utilizing the power of facial recognition to target their content.

I hope one of them be yours…