Outdoor advertisers using smart technology to reach more customers

One of Go Media's digital billboards. Photo / Go Media

By Phil Pennington of RNZ

Technology that lets outdoor advertisers track people in the street is spreading, though the marketing industry says it is at pains not to invade privacy.

The country now has at least 1400 digital billboards and screen-posters, many of them with smart technology.

Highly targeted advertising is common online and outdoor advertising is playing catch-up.

Several major agencies are getting location data about consumers from cellphone tracking, but they mix it all together, or aggregate it, according to an industry report.

At least 49 billboards have cameras that count cars by recognising their number plates, but they do not identify their owners, according to owner Lumo.

Meanwhile, Westfield shopping malls have 126 SmartScreens that can detect faces and even gauge what mood a person is in - but not who they are.

The advertising, tech and retail companies at the leading edge of the digital expansion said they were not gathering or processing any personal data, or it was all anonymised, and that they followed all privacy laws.

“The business has no interest in the movement of individuals,” said Canterbury’s Go Media, which has digital billboards in the three main centres.

“Rather, Out-Of-Home [OOH advertising] has always been used to deliver advertisers’ marketing messages to large volumes of audiences.”

Go Media used a mobile GPS platform that gave it “down to the hour” data for each digital screen about “customers’ real-world behaviours, brand affinities and purchase habits” - but none of that had identifiers attached, it said.

The GPS platform is from Australian firm Landmarks ID.

It has a deal to access the location data from the phone apps of more than 80,000 members of the leading consumer loyalty scheme, AA Smartfuel.

Members were only enrolled if they explicitly opted in, AA Smartfuel said.

- RNZ