Lord Alan Sugar's digital outdoor advertising company, Amscreen, is partnering with supermarket retailer Tesco in the launch of advanced and intuitive screens known as OptimEyes. Following the company's partnership with audience measurement company Quividi back in April, Amscreen have secured an inaugural position on 450 Tesco petrol station forecourts which will allow advertisers to comprehensively refine their campaigns in real time.
These hi-tech outdoor advertising screens will allow brands to monitor their campaign results throughout its duration, displaying images based on the date and time of day, and also boasting the ability to adapt to suit the gender and age of in-store customers. Located by the till, in-built cameras will allow OptimEyes to recognise customer features such as cheekbone structure and hair length and detect how many people are in the queue, meaning that a long line of women could trigger a cosmetics ad, for example, or a coffee shop could advertise during the morning rush hour.
Almost comparable to the Minority Report scene where Tom Cruise receives a personalised holographic advert in a Gap clothing store, the OptimEyes platforms will run 10-second tailored adverts on a 100-second loop, with Tesco petrol stations category director Peter Cattell stating that the outdoor media will "enhance the customer shopping experience". The five-year deal has sparked worry across privacy campaigners; however, Sugar reassures audiences that the technology does not store the data or identify people,
"but just works out gender and sorts customers into one of three age brackets".Amscreen's intention is to allow brands to target audience demographics more accurately, and Sugar claims that it "could change the face of British retail".
Amscreen currently operates a portfolio of over 6,000 digital outdoor screens, reaching over 50 million members of the public on a weekly basis. The addition of OptimEyes will, according to Amscreen, align the digital out of home industry
"more closely with the online advertising industry's real-time campaign optimisation model".