Billboards to Track People via Mobile Phones

March 2nd, 2016

Awake Goy

Billboards to Track People via Mobile Phones

March 2nd, 2016

“All data is anonymous and aggregated, they say, meaning individual consumers cannot be identified.”

Oh sure.

Via: New York Times:

Pass a billboard while driving in the next few months, and there is a good chance the company that owns it will know you were there and what you did afterward.

Clear Channel Outdoor Americas, which has tens of thousands of billboards across the United States, will announce on Monday that it has partnered with several companies, including AT&T, to track peopleâ€™s travel patterns and behaviors through their mobile phones.

By aggregating the trove of data from these companies, Clear Channel Outdoor hopes to provide advertisers with detailed information about the people who pass its billboards to help them plan more effective, targeted campaigns. With the data and analytics, Clear Channel Outdoor could determine the average age and gender of the people who are seeing a particular billboard in, say, Boston at a certain time and whether they subsequently visit a store.

â€œIn aggregate, that data can then tell you information about what the average viewer of that billboard looks like,â€� said Andy Stevens, senior vice president for research and insights at Clear Channel Outdoor. â€œObviously thatâ€™s very valuable to an advertiser.â€�

Clear Channel and its partners â€” AT&T Data Patterns, a unit of AT&T that collects location data from its subscribers; PlaceIQ, which uses location data collected from other apps to help determine consumer behavior; and Placed, which pays consumers for the right to track their movements and is able to link exposure to ads to in-store visits â€” all insist that they protect the privacy of consumers. All data is anonymous and aggregated, they say, meaning individual consumers cannot be identified.

Still, Mr. Stevens acknowledged that the companyâ€™s new offering â€œdoes sound a bit creepy.â€�

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