Personalised ads are nothing new. We're all more than familiar with emails containing information about our last purchase or something similar.
But if you've watched Minority Report or played Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, you might recall a more advanced form of personalised advertising.
(Skip to 3:26 for the Call of Duty scene)
Okay, both take a biometric ID, rather than scan your face, but they still show adverts that adapt depending on who you are or what you look like.
Why am I talking about a film from 14 years ago and a game from a franchise struggling to maintain its popularity and critical acclaim? Because this type of advertising is coming. Maybe not in the exact same way, but it's coming.
In fact, for Expedia and The Hawai‘i Tourism Authority (HTA), it is already here.
In their new campaign, Discover Your Aloha, your device's camera or webcam is used (with your permission, of course) to scan your face as you watch a pretty generic tourism advert - plenty of sun, stunning landscapes, people having fun and doing adventurous things. But you're supposed to smile at the bits you particularly like. So I tried it out.
Once the advert is finished, I was assigned an animal and entirely new advert depending on what I smiled at. I was assigned a 'Pua'a' (a pig) - Hawai'i's "bold adventurer". The new advert showed clips of adventurous activites - kayaking, surfing, hiking, dirt buggies, caving, zip-wiring, helicopter rides. And once my advert was over, I was given a few suggestions of places I might like to visit in Hawai'i... mainly activities seen in the second advert.
Noah Tratt, senior global vice president of Expedia Media Solutions, said: “Discover Your Aloha is the first campaign where we integrated facial recognition software, and is an example of the type of innovation we can bring, at scale with our global audience, to our marketing partners.
I'm not sure this is the finished product in terms of facial recognition advertising; I really had to over-exaggerate my smile for it to register during the first advert. And I'm fairly certain I got a few strange looks around the office as my cheeks crept higher and higher up my face.
It's worth checking out, though!
By Jonathan Davies, editor, Digital Marketing Magazine
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