BrainTrust Query: Is the digital profiling of in-store shoppers a recipe for privacy disaster?
Gaze tracking technology is becoming a very exciting option for providing shopper insights such as how many people walked by a screen or display, how many looked, at what and for how long. This is true progress for the Marketing-at-Retail space, as it opens the door to real-time analytics that allow us to respond according to what works - and what doesn't.
Another feature that many technology firms behind these systems tout is the ability to gauge shopper demographics such as age, ethnicity and sex. The promise is to not only gather these valuable data points, but to conceptually serve up content that is relevant to the type of person standing in front of the screen.
As exciting as this new technology is, there is an active strategic debate around it. Media buyers indeed want this valuable information to help them plan their media exposures within retail stores. However, privacy sensitivity has increased over the years and this new method of tracking may not sit well with them. Do Not Call and Do Not Mail lists are alive and well in many states and DM News has recently been reporting on the proposed Do Not Cookie bill. This points to less - not more - tolerance around personal privacy in other channels.
Discussion Questions: Should in-store marketers install gaze tracking systems that profile shopper demographics or is it opening Pandora's Box to a privacy backlash?
[Author's commentary] I come from the advertising world with much of my time entrenched in the online media space - from its emergence to current market acceptance. Because direct marketing is a principle for all digital media, this is an important question for our firm.
We are 100 percent on board with gaze tracking to monitor content/message effectiveness that will hopefully allow us to "optimize" messages much like we do with web marketing. However, the idea of doing real time demographic profiling without making shoppers aware of it is a scary proposition to me - as a marketer because I'm afraid of a potential backlash and as a shopper because I simply don't like it. As a consumer, I want to have control over which brands are allowed to do this to me and which are not.
Consumers have shown us that they are sensitive to privacy and want to be asked before we assume it's okay. My gut says we should take the high road as an industry - regardless of how tantalizing the proposition is from a media buyer's perspective. As the saying goes, just because we can doesn't mean we should!