PRIVACY MATTERS with Dr. Ann Cavoukian
WIN-WIN SOLUTIONS DEFINITELY POSSIBLE
Security and IT professionals can learn a lot about the principles of privacy from the digital signage industry and its use of anonymous video analytics
O
ver the past year, there has been a great deal of media attention on the online tracking of individuals for mar- keting and other purposes.
Consumers, regulators and advertisers have all weighed in on this contentious pri- vacy issue. The stakes are high, and the technologies are complex. Nonetheless, a win/win outcome is possible. By applying the principles of Privacy by Design early and systematically, privacy, consumer trust, personalization, innovation and eco- nomic benefits may all be achieved. This is positive-sum thinking at its best! As online marketers work to develop such a win/win approach, they would be well-served by taking their cue from the equally ubiquitous — but far less con- tentious — world of personalized “offline” display advertising to consumers in the “real world.”
Earlier this year, my office released a paper that described innovative digital signage technology, developed in Ontario, that embraces the principles of Privacy by Design by providing customized content to consumers without identifying them. It is a solution that offers important illustra- tive lessons for the online industry. Networked digital screens are now prevalent in retail and public spaces, while hundreds of networks, operating hundreds of thousands of Internet-con- nected screens, have been deployed across North America and around the world in malls, airports, grocery store chains and conference facilities. Digital Out Of Home (DOOH) advertising is now
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a serious contender for the advertising budgets of major brands and their media planning agencies. The industry reached an estimated $6.5 billion US in 2010. Getting a return on this investment and its attendant communications opportunities depends on running content that viewers will see and remember, and on under- standing the dynamics and characteristics of the viewing audience. Accordingly, audi- ence measurement has become a sophisti- cated process. One technology uses sensors integrated with flat panel displays to detect and count the number of faces that look in the direction of the screens. It can also parse detected faces by gender and age range. Known as anonymous video analytics
(AVA), this technology uses pattern de- tection algorithms to scan real-time video feeds, looking for patterns that match the software’s understanding of faces. The data is logged and the video is destroyed on the fly. By design, nothing in the process recognizes the individuals who pass in front of the sensors. The analytics generated by AVA sys- tems provide marketers and business communicators valuable insights into the numbers and characteristics of their au- diences, and their viewing patterns. And while AVA has attracted the attention of privacy advocates concerned about its possible implications, face pattern detec- tion technology is neither designed nor able to recognize individuals. It is nothing at all like the types of technologies popu- larized by films, such as Minority Report, which use surveillance and biometrics to
recognize, log and track individuals. Nonetheless, some technology firms recognized the potential for concern early on, and developed privacy and consumer protection policies. The user base of the industry at large, guided by the U.S.- based Center for Democracy and Tech- nology, has also developed and released its own set of voluntary guidelines. What the digital signage industry has understood is that building privacy right into digital signage business models and data management practices is a great way to prevent privacy risks before they arise. They realized that it is far less expensive to integrate privacy controls now, while iden- tification systems are still relatively new to the industry, than it will be to retrofit pri- vacy protections onto future systems. It is a lesson that has broad applicability in on- line marketing and elsewhere. By embedding privacy into how these systems are designed and deployed, the industry has paved the way for its own success. This kind of foresight is precisely what is needed in order to manage pri- vacy issues effectively, and arrive at pos- itive-sum, win/win solutions that meet the needs of both businesses and con- sumers, in every industry.
Dr. Ann Cavoukian, Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner, is recognized as one of the leading privacy experts in the world and the
originator of the concept of Privacy by De- sign (
www.privacydesign.ca).
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