White Paper: A Report On A Field Trial Of Anonymous Video Analytics (AVA) In Digital Signage

Digital signs represent a growing advertising medium offering many advantages over traditional outdoor advertising, such as billboards and posters. Millions of digital signs are now in place in stores, restaurants, traffic hubs, college campuses, office buildings and many other locations. However, the audience for digital signage is largely unmeasured - compared to other media such as TV, radio, magazines and even other outdoor advertising (e.g., billboards), there is a shortage of reliable metrics telling us how many people watch them, when, for how long, demographics, etc. Better metrics will enable advertisers to evaluate and plan their purchases in digital signage making it possible for digital signage networks to obtain a larger share of overall advertising budgets.

Anonymous Video Analytics (AVA) technology provides a way to obtain detailed, costeffective audience impression metrics. With AVA, a sensor attached to a digital sign sends data to face detection software which logs how long the individual viewed the sign and also classifies the viewer by age, gender,etc. AVA is completely anonymous— no images or video are recorded,and no personally identifiable information is ever collected—only statistical audience data is logged.