TruMedia ad tech's senior PROM
The next time you stop to watch a big-screen advertisement, remember: it may be watching you back.
TruMedia provides retailers with a combination of iCapture video-capture hardware and Proactive Merchandising (PROM) software to build custom age-targeted advertising content to passers-by. How? Face detection. The software analyzes the video stream and--as we're increasingly seeing with consumer cameras and camcorders--can distinguish faces in a crowd.
It's been able to differentiate between adults and kids for a while, but the new development is the ability to identify seniors as well. As they're a distinct and significant marketing demographic, that's a nice capability. But also kind of a mixed blessing for the targetees; much as you probably don't want to be assaulted with Disney ads as you wander the mall, do you really want to be the reason it goes from Disney to Depends?
Senior Editor Lori Grunin has been covering digital imaging for two decades, but her memory's kind of sketchy on the details. You can hear about it every week on Indecent Exposure, the podcast she co-hosts with Matt Fitzgerald. 
