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 For someone who lives so close to large metropolitan areas,
billboards are a common sight. So much so that even though I regularly see up
to several dozen in a single day, I couldn't recall the advertisements or
products on a single one. Yet, when I make my way past Albany (and CR4 HQ) and
find myself in Vermont, I almost certainly notice the absence of billboards.
Vermont is one of four states, the others being Hawaii,
Alaska and Maine, that outright ban such oversized advertisements. It's not a
coincidence that all these states have a reputation for natural beauty. States
with boring drives (looking at you Plains states) typically support
billboards as they may prevent highway hypnosis.
Yet in the Hudson Valley, billboards are prominent near any
city, route or highway. And when you go further south towards New York City,
billboards stop being a decoration and become potentially intrusive as they
monitor the behaviors of passersby.
Clear Channel is an advertising company with thousands of
billboards across the nation. In its 11 largest markets, CC has already rolled out RADAR,
a data monitoring and analytics tool. The billboard recognizes
who walks or drives past a billboard, and then compares this to what a
passerby did following exposure to the billboard.
 CC does this with the help of AT&T, who obviously route
nearby cell signals through the billboard, which collects user data. With the
help of data aggregating software, such as PlaceIQ and Placed, CC can determine
if the billboard might have inspired someone to watch a particular TV show or
visit a store.
For a real world example: an AT&T customer walks past a
billboard in Times Square, on his or her way to an off-Broadway show. In
conjunction with the PlaceIQ or Placed, CC now has access to how long he or she
were at show and where he/she went to eat afterwards, and if he or she walked
past that billboard again on the way home.
This will enable CC billboard
customers to better target demographics and quantify billboard influences--think
of it as the everlasting CR4 pop-up, albeit in the real world. Eventually, digital billboards that can swap advertisements billboards might begin targeting specific people who walk by, especially those who might have thousands of social media friends.
CC promises that all data is kept anonymous and that users
can opt-out, and truthfully there are plenty of user data aggregating
techniques that are as provocative or worse. Clear Channel is planning on
rolling RADAR out across the entire country and the fact that so many once
passive advertisements are becoming active data collectors has brought the
attention of some officials.
It's important to note that this isn't the first wave of
billboards that began
recording who looked at them, but the fact that AT&T customer movements
are being tracked for advertising analytics by their cell phone feels very 1984.
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Re: Pop-up Ads Can Now Follow You Into the Real World
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