Billboards film you then target advertising

More than 11 million people a week are being filmed by digital advertising panels in shopping centres across France and they are then shown promotions that are ‘tailored’ for them based on age and sex.

Advertising firm Smartmedia has 600 panels in about 150 shopping centres containing cameras at the top that have facial recognition software that will screen ads that advertisers specify; so a woman approaching the screen will be shown a brand of handbag while a man may be shown types of shoes.

The ‘intelligent’ panels make up only a small percentage of the 40,000 digital publicity panels that offer HD television quality advertising in France but they allow advertisers to put their product directly in front of their target market.

It may seem ‘Big Brother-ish’ but data protection body CNIL confirmed to Connexion that as long as no data is kept or transmitted the panels can pick up and use information from cameras or even basic smartphone data.