Today on my iPhone, browsing news on an application designed by Interactive Mediums for Newser, I came across this interesting article about a “Minority Report”-like mobile marketing trial taking place in Japan that will soon be brought to the U.S.
If not familiar with the movie reference, futuristic billboards presented personalized ads based on your actual identify as you walked by them. The trial taking place in Japan is similar in that it features facial recognition capabilities to understand age and gender, and use these as inputs into personalized advertisements.
Although an interesting, if not very exciting marketing advancement, the article raises logical privacy concerns that arise with anything which consumers have little control over. In this case, identities remain private and the scans are not saved following delivery of personalized messages.
Whatever form this takes in the U.S. or elsewhere, you can be certain that it will be followed by integration with location aware smartphones so that consumers may opt into being recognized and presented with personalized offers and messages based on actual identity, not just age or gender.
Preparing for this future now, marketers would be wise to develop mobile relationships with their customers using commonly available SMS text message marketing capabilities as offered by companies like Interactive Mediums. Doing so successfully is equally a function of adhering to opt in standards which will not likely change even in the face of advancements like intelligent billboards.
