Now the Ads Watch You

From Fox4kc.com:

Watch an advertisement on a video screen in a mall, health club, or grocery store and there's a growing chance the ad is watching you too. Small cameras can now be embedded in the screen or hidden around it to track who looks at the screen and for how long. The makers say the software can determine the viewer's gender, approximate age range, and, in some cases, ethnicity, and can change the ads accordingly.

Tru-Media , the makers of the technology, argue that its next generation advertising systems don’t have privacy implications in that they only enable ads to become more targeted. Actual images and identity information are not transmitted back to their servers; only general counts and other statistics relating to ad viewership are retained.

Still, I think that elderly shoppers might not welcome the idea of ad monitors suddenly switching to commercials for Boniva, Depends, and Quaker Oatmeal as they walk by.