See a billboard? He sees you too

The American company Clear Channel Outdoor Americas owns tens of thousands of billboards throughout the country. Many of them have already been converted into tracking monitors, which collect information about all passers-by .

This is important information for advertisers: they learn the audience size of each advertisement, and also get demographic data on them: age and gender. In this way, you can plan more effective campaigns by placing ads in optimal places with a suitable target audience. Naturally, the names of people are not passed on to the advertiser: the information is anonymous, so everything is legal.

How is this technically implemented? No face recognition was needed, everything is much simpler. Clear Channel Outdoor Americas announced yesterdayon an agreement with leading US mobile operators, including AT&T, which transmit geolocation information about their subscribers. This is also legal, because it is provided for in a standard service contract between a subscriber and a telecom operator.

It is difficult for a subscriber to avoid tracking, because his coordinates are calculated not by GPS, but by triangulating the distance to the cell towers. The operator compiles the base of everyone who appears in certain coordinates in the area of ​​the billboard - and sells it to Clear Channel Outdoor Americas, indicating the time the person appeared, his gender, age, etc. Information on the number and demographic composition of the audience is very valuable not only for advertisers, but also for owners of shops, restaurants and other institutions.

In fact, mobile operators have long been trading in such information, and not only them. This is the case, for example, for mobile application developers (although they only get GPS coordinates).

AT&T operates the AT&T Data Patterns division to collect and analyze subscriber geolocation information. Specialized companies, including PlaceIQ and Placed, do the same, either buying information from mobile application developers or paying users the right to track their location (this is a more honest approach).

Of course, this practice raises complaints from privacy advocates: “People have no idea what they are being tracked,” saysJeffrey Chester, Executive Director, Center for Digital Democracy. “This is incredibly nasty and is another new way to invade privacy.”

Since yesterday, Clear Channel Outdoor Americas has been providing Radar service to advertisers in 11 major US cities, including Los Angeles and New York.