Eye Tracking and Augmented Reality: The Future of Advertising

In a previous article we discussed how augmented reality and eye tracking could improve social situations. But what about advertising? Search engines and social networks collect data on your interests based on your searches and on information you include in your social profiles. They use this data to identify potential products and services that may interest you and then try to display ads that are relevant your unique tastes. Often, many of these ads go unnoticed or unclicked due to the fact that we have learned ignore the area of the screen where these ads are placed or that the advertisement is too loosely based on your interests to attract your attention.

This failure on the advertising system’s part is wasting a lot of your time and advertisers’ money. What if it was possible to display advertisements directly on objects, like buildings or cars, as people look at them? Or what if these advertisements could be superimposed upon our vision using augmented reality? With the emerging technologies of eye tracking and augmented reality, advertisers could greatly increase the relevance of the information that is placed in front of us.

Billboards on the highway are often targeted at the greatest demographic group in the area in hopes that something about the ad will pique the interest of one person out of say 100. If you’re like me, you selectively ignore almost every billboard when driving, since billboard ads are simply not relevant enough and they often distract from keeping our eyes on the road. Advertisers hope that these roadside ads may stick in the subconscious and cause you to remember to take action to buy their product or service at some later date. Recently rotating billboards and large display screen technology have allowed more than one advertisement to be displayed on one billboard. This of course allows advertisers to target more than one type of person, but more often than not still fails to attract enough attention.

Augmented reality could be used to change all this. Billboards, signage, blank walls, or even blank clothing on people walking down the street could be used to maximize targeted ads by displaying superimposed information that is pertinent to you and your specific interests. But even more interesting is the fact that we could use eye tracking to recognize what you are immediately focused on. Given that, only display information pertinent to that location, your specific interests, the current physical activity you are engaged in, your emotional state and geographical location.

Another side benefit of this kind of technology would be that advertisements could be used to subsidize your gas spending, your cell phone bill and other expenses that would allow advertisers to serve very targeted ads and information to you. Of course you would have more choice in the information being served as well as the amount, so you wouldn’t be completely inundated with every ad possible.

Your Future Morning View Will Make You Vomit

Related articles:

1. NEC’s Biometric Technology and the Future of Advertising
2. Eye Tracking: Augmented Reality Apps for the iPhone
3. Sony Aims for Augmented Reality Glasses
4. The Congruence of Eye Tracking and Augmented Reality
5. Eye Tracking and Augmented Reality: An Interview With Metaio CEO
6. Improve Your Advertising Campaigns With Eye Tracking
7. The race for augmented reality glasses
8. A Brief History of Augmented Reality