The next time you go to a Tesco petrol station you could find yourself being scanned to see what sort of adverts you are going to get shown.
It all sounds very mysterious and Big Brother-like but it is likely to be happening in a Tesco petrol station near you very soon. The retail chain is going to roll out the face scanning technology to 450 of its petrol stations around the UK.
The system in question is called OptimEyes and it works by scanning the customer’s face and working out their age, their sex and how long they spend looking at the adverts which are shown while they are there.
The information gathered in this way will be used so that advertisers can work out what adjustments they need to make to their advertising campaigns. Privacy campaigners aren’t happy with the idea, of course.
No Images Are Stored
The firm behind OptimEyes is Amscreen and Simon Sugar is the CEO. He said that they plan to move the technology into “as many supermarkets as possible.” He pointed out that the scanners don’t store images of the faces they scan or recognise people. All they do is work out the age and gender of the people they see..
Peter Cattell is the Category Director for the Tesco petrol stations and he said that being able to direct the advertising material at certain market segments based on time and location could be “extremely useful”. It hasn’t yet been revealed which of the firm’s petrol stations will get this new technology.
