You may think that “Minority Report” is my favorite movie when you read my blog posts. The thing is that technologies presented in this movie as a pure fantasy are being showcased here. During their long walks in the Austin Convention Center participants at SXSW Interactive can experience interesting installations of adaptive advertising. Similar to the scene in the movie when Tom Cruise is exposed to the advertising messages tailored just to him.
A company called Immersive Labs presents how the future of digital billboards and ad-screens could look. These adaptive screens scan your face and compare it to the database of typical faces and choose an ad to display according to your gender and age. The system is not identifying you; it just compares you to the typical physiognomy of your face, as I understood from the explanation from Jason Sosa, founder of the company. It does it very fast on the fly.
There are several categories according to which the ad is selected for you. In the category of males I was identified as an adult male – between young and senior. Glad to see that, being 42 years old.