It’s no secret that we live in a surveillance society where we are tracked and monitored every day. This is also changing the buying behaviour of consumers.
Walgreens in New York City is pushing a few boundaries and is challenging the traditional type of point-of-sale we’re used to and is replacing it with eye-catching, digital content as it serves customers targeted ads as they shop.
Cooler Screens, a new startup is piloting a new door made specifically for commercial freezers and fridges equipped with a camera, motion sensors and eye tracking technology. The doors can pick your gender, general age, product interest, how long you’ve been standing there for as well as your emotional response to a particular product.
Once you’ve been “analysed”, algorithms are set to determine which type of promotions are most relevant to you. An example might be a man standing in front of the Coke fridge where an ad is served to him relating to Coke Zero as its been determined that it is more male skewed as opposed to Diet Coke for women.
What’s also really cool about the doors is that they can use contextual information like the time of day to encourage you to purchase a specific product. For instance, dinner time is around the corner, the doors pick up that the customer has picked up a 6-pack of beers so a targeted pizza ad appears by one of the brands offering a special price with the beer purchase.
The company is also looking at ways that customers can opt-in which would make the ads even more targeted and focus on relevant content to say vegans or gluten intolerant people.
Brands are quickly booking advertising space with this new technology and what’s an even bigger bonus for the retailer is that the company comes and retrofits the doors with their digital ones for free and then sells the advertising space. Although it could be slightly obtrusive, the research has shown it actually provides a much better shopper experience for customers.
Source: Fast Company
