One relevant factor for getting (potential) customer’s attention is knowing and anticipating their reactions. Advertisers know that there is nothing like an infallible ad. Every ad could be appealing for someone as it can also have the opposite effect on others. Women’s reactions are different from men’s reaction, as well as young people can react in a different way compared to the elderly.

Consequently, an advertiser should make a choice between developing a single ad that could be interesting for everybody, and/or creating several different ads, each one fit for every potential type of customer.

Thanks to the digital technology, the adversing industry is starting to invest in tools capable of recognizing customers, understanding which “customer category” they belong to, hence displaying the right ads for them.

This concept has been partially explored online, with the “behavioral targeting”, but now it has also become an off-line reality.

Let’s take, for instance, the French company Quividi: they are using a very interesting kind of billboard, backed by a video camera and a computer: with this technology – as stated on Times by Paolo Prandoni, Quividi’s chief scientific officer – “we know how many people have walked in front of the screen, how many turned to face the ad, and how long they looked at it”.

The Quividi system can also distinguish the gender and the age of the viewer, so it is possible to get a demographic background about a particular ad.

On my behalf, Quividi’s tools (and tools similar to such), could provide a really deep analysis about viewer’s behaviour, not just to figure out how much time a viewer has spent in front of the screen, but even to make a proper database of “actions” performed by potential customers, in order to provide the right ad for the right person.

Imagine yourself approaching a screen display; and straight away the display recognizes your gender and your age followed by the advertisement that, according to the data, would suit you entirely.

Quinvidi’s idea evidently describes the way the advertising industry will be pointing towards in the coming years. The key is to catch the consumer’s attention in a personalized way, from data entirely gathered from the consumers themselves.