Long Range Eye Tracking for Advertisers

holy_calamity writes "A Canadian firm has launched a device that can track the gaze of multiple people from up to 10 metres away. Originally developed at Queen's University, Ontario, they hope to sell it to advertisers to allow them to monitor how many people look at their ads. Admittedly they are trying more benign stuff too like better hearing aids, but I doubt that will make up for movie posters that make a song and dance whenever you glance their way."

Comments

It's a Phillip K. Dick Future,

[justsomecomputerguy]

we'll just be living in it.

If I were them

[Who235]

. . .movie posters that make a song and dance whenever you glance their way

If I were them, I'd make it so they moved more when you looked away - causing you to look back.

In all seriousness though, this technology is a little creepy. Not only that, but tracking eye movement has to have better applications than simply refining the process of ad targeting.

Advertisements kill everything

[mangu]

Advertisers need to end their delusions, they must realize that they nearly killed the internet, and are in the process of killing TV

Marketing is one of the most obnoxious influences in modern history, perhaps only lawyers and religion are as destructive.

There are people like engineers, programmers, farmers, teachers, machinists, etc, who do productive work. These people *create* goods and services. They *generate* stuff that people enjoy, the result of their work is more than the input.

What marketing does to their customer is, if everything goes well, to increase market share, which means another corporation loses an equivalent market share. Marketing generates nothing. The result of marketing is always less than the input.

Re:Advertisements kill everything

[mpcooke3]

There are people like engineers, programmers, farmers, teachers, machinists, etc, who do productive work. These people *create* goods and services. They *generate* stuff that people enjoy, the result of their work is more than the input.

Unfortunately a lot of those fantastic selfless engineers and programmers are paid for their work by that evil advertising revenue.
The majority of software developed for the interweb is one small example.

Re:Advertisements kill everything

[shakuni]

Your understanding of marketing is, i must say, very limited and mostly wrong. Marketing is often used synonymously with advertising, which is wrong. A good marketer understands the consumer needs at an individual level and is able to aggregate it at multiple levels. A good marketer, based on this knowledge, is able to provide product definition. A good marketer is then able to provide critical inputs on what is the best way to communicate this to the customer and best way to make it available to the customer, while ensuring that the company makes money. Now each of these require a lifetime of experience and study and hence often are sub-functions called product management, brand management, pricing manager, distribution/channel manager etc. Without all this thought and its execution through operations, no R&D will have the legs to get the right products to paying customers. There is a lot of BS that happens in the name of marketing but that happens even with engineering.... I have seen terrible marketers and worse engineers.

Re:Privacy

[Watson Ladd]

That's before you hook it up to a face recognition system. The correct time to legislate is before foreseeable abuses happen, not after.

Re:Better uses

[Yenya]

I'd rather not.

I often need to read something from one window (an example in the manpage, maybe), and write without looking into another window. This is why auto-raising the focused window is plain wrong (it can obscure the window you want to read from) and this is why using the device from TFA for focus tracking would not be usable.