Once upon a time, facial recognition was a bizarre concept, something out of science fiction movies. Not only is facial recognition now prevalent in our daily lives, it is consistently being used to evolve technologies and industries that have remained stagnant for decades.
The potential applications for facial recognition, especially in combination with other emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, can make a world of a difference in industries such as advertising, outdoor advertising, and more specifically Digital Out of Home Advertising.
In this article, we’ll be discussing a brief history of facial recognition technology, how it’s implemented and used in an application, along with the various ways that up and coming advertising companies are utilizing the technology to make serious advancements in the sector.
How It Works
Put simply, facial recognition works by allowing the technology to scan, then verify a person’s facial structure. This process can be outlined in three base steps that is the underscore for the majority of facial recognition technologies.
- Detection:
In the first step of the process, the human face is located and then detected in either image or video format.
- Capture & Analyze:
Once the initial scan is complete, the process move on to capturing and analyzing distinct features, otherwise known as biometrics, which allows the facial information to be transferred into digital information captured by the application that’s deploying the technology.
- Verification:
Once analyzed, this information is typically transmitted to a database to match and verify the facial image. However, it’s important to note that not all facial recognition technologies store and deploy this data.
Facial recognition and biometric scanning has already become a facet of everyday life, with the most simple and relevant example of that being the iPhone. In the newest models of the iPhone, consumers can unlock and perform specific actions by scanning their face, as opposed to typing in their password or scanning their fingerprint.
How Alfi Utilizes AI & Facial Recognition for DOOH
Outside of unlocking phones, and matching faces to names in a city database, other existing applications of this technology is fascinating and marks a revolution for some industries, specifically, advertising.
Alfi is an enterprise SaaS company, powered by Ai and machine learning. Alfi utilizes computer vision with our proprietary machine learning algorithms to sense human behavior and performs with high levels of accuracy of real-time metrics.
Alfi specializes in the advancement of DOOH, or Digital Out of Home advertising, in which digital billboards are able to more quickly and effectively reach consumers in the one place where they’re not surrounded by screens, out of home.
In populated urban areas such as shopping centers, subways, and downtown districts, DOOH advertising provides a unique opportunity for both local and global businesses alike to launch targeted marketing campaigns.
Alfi takes their technology a step further, by introducing a facial recognition and AI aspect to their advertisements. Their technology can almost instantaneously scan the facial reactions to their advertisements, which then translates to a sentiment analysis for brands and clients to better understand the specific results and reactions to their campaigns.
The data runs deep, fueled not only by facial recognition, but artificial intelligence as well, Alfi is target specific demographics by launching their billboards in areas that data has reported a target customer base to be, then provide detailed analytics in terms of watch time, sentiment analysis, and other key metrics for brands to better understand the data – and get the most out of their campaigns.
Conclusion
Facial recognition and other smart technologies are leading an exciting path into the future, as both standalone and supporting features, as well as changing the ways certain industries act and think.
The applications that companies such as Alfi have been able to implement this technology into is highly innovative, promising, and exciting for the advertising and DOOH industries as a whole.
