It’s one thing to design a digital display but, as any CFO will tell you, it’s another thing to be able to measure – for certain – how many faces looked at that display, how long they looked, their relative age, and even if they were male or female.

Until recently, measuring this level of ROI automatically was unheard of, but innovative face detection technology does just that.

This technology is called anonymous impression metric, but we call it brilliant. As the technology becomes more widely known, the most common question clients ask is ‘What is it and how does it work?’

Face recognition software is to digital displays what analytics is to Google or Neilson to TV and there’s no need to get nervous - no images are recorded and all privacy laws are respected.

Different face recognition software packages have different specialties but they break down into two main areas: People counting and traffic analysis.

People counting software is capable of tracking both viewer counts and demographics.

For example, an advertiser could determine how many senior women vs. young adult women viewed their display and tweak their display accordingly to get the results they want. These metrics allow companies to increase both ad revenue and relevancy, and maximize ROI.

Traffic analysis capability is where it gets really interesting.

Face detection technology is the basis of software that measures people counts, queue length and even wait times. This information allows companies to schedule staff as needed, improve customer service, increase conversion rates, and ultimately, increase sales. This information can also be translated into traffic dispersion maps to help companies to improve store layouts and in-store marketing.

Face detection technology provides users with information on:

• Peak conversion hours and rate
• Percentage of shoppers who enter the store that make a purchase
• Average sale amount
• Optimum shopper-to-staff ratio
• Point of sale data
• Impact analysis of increased conversion

These new measurement systems leave nothing in your digital campaign to chance and are quickly turning digital marketing into an exact science. Our clients find that this level of feedback helps them run more strategic campaigns that deliver a better ROI than in the days of correlations alone.