Sunday, December 22, 2002

High-tech billboards tune in to drivers' tastes Roadside signs 
coming to Bay Area listen to car radios, then adjust pitch  

Robert Salladay, Chronicle Staff Writer

The billboard is listening.  

In an advertising ploy right out of Steven Spielberg's "Minority 
Report," electronic billboards in the Bay Area and Sacramento are 
being equipped to profile commuters as they whiz by -- and then 
instantly personalize freeway ads based on the wealth and habits 
of those drivers.  

For example, if the freeway were packed with country music listeners, 
the billboards might make a pitch for casinos. If National Public Radio 
were on, the billboards could change to ads for a high-quality car or a 
gourmet grocery.  

The billboards -- in Palo Alto, Daly City and Fremont -- will pick up 
which radio stations are being played and then instantly access a vast 
databank of information about the people who typically listen to those 
stations. The electronic ads will then change to fit listener profiles.  

(snip)

In Spielberg's "Minority Report," Tom Cruise's character makes his 
way through city streets as billboard advertisements scan his retina 
and then personalize ads for products.  

BIG BROTHER WORLD  

Several of the Bay Area residents contacted by The Chronicle said 
they were mostly resigned to a Big Brother world where government 
and corporations collect large amounts of information on citizens, 
often without permission.  

Many worried about the distraction of the large, video-screen billboards. 
Vernon Burton of San Leandro called it "junk capitalism" motivated by 
shameless greed. Lowell Young of Mariposa said, "Everyone should 
turn off their radios until they let us have our privacy back."  

(snip)

The California system uses a "consumer monitoring system" developed 
by Mobiltrak of Chandler, Ariz., to pick up radio waves "leaked" from 
the antennas of up to 90 percent of all cars passing by and pinpoint 
the stations being played.   

Each station has a typical listener profile derived from detailed 
consumer surveys. The system will assess the most popular radio 
station during a given hour and target the ads to those drivers.  

"I can tell you how much money they spent on fast food in the last 
week. I can tell you where they are shopping," said Phyllis Neill, 
chief operating officer of Mobiltrak. "I can tell you what percentage 
of them were married and shop at Petsmart and made more than $100,000 
a year and potentially could come to Office Max in the next six months."  

DATA COLLECTED AND PASSED ON  

Neill envisions a system of Mobiltrak- equipped billboards along, 
say, a six-mile stretch of freeway. The first billboard's receiver 
would collect data on a block of cars and send it to the billboards 
farther on, which would then switch to the appropriate ads.  

"We have only just begun to scratch the surface of what the technology 
can do," Neill said.  

(snip)

The technology is designed to be anonymous and passive, she said, 
and relies on information about large numbers of drivers.  

(snip)

E-mail Robert Salladay at rsalladay{at}sfchronicle.com.

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Full article at - San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/12/22/MN242772.DTL


Cheers, Steve..

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