Face Recogntion Marketing - Where are we?

In an article in the Daily News this past August, Michael Walsh discussed an announcement made by Red Pepper (an ad agency specializing in marketing technologies) that it was finalizing testing for Facedeals – a facial recognition-marketing app that might change the way marketers target consumers. If a user opts in to Facedeals, when she simply passes by a store, Facedeals cameras will recognize her face, simultaneously check her into that location on Facebook, and begin offering her customized deals based on her Facebook history and the products she “liked”.  According to Red Pepper “The Facedeals app must be authorized via your Facebook account. With your help, the app verifies your most recent photo tags, using those to map the physical appearance of your face. Our custom-developed cameras then simply use this existing data to identify you in the real world. Personalized deals can now be delivered to your Smartphone from all participating locations—all you have to do is show your face.”

Though Facedeals uses the social network as an easy way for people to upload photos for Facedeals to do its own facial recognition processing, Facebook has made it clear that it does not approve or endorse Facedeals.   This might be in part because, just this year, Facebook itself came under intense scrutiny by legislators in the US and Europe after in purchased Face.com and implemented its face-recognition API, which automatically suggested which friends to tag in photos. In a report by The Irish Data Protection Commissioner on Facebook last month, the Commissioner found that Facebook should have handled the implementation of its facial recognition/tag suggest feature more appropriately.  Facebook has shut down the feature in the EU and also agreed to delete collected templates for EU users by October 15. 

But Tagged photos are extremely valuable.  We know personalization is the “holy grail” of advertising and marketing. And facial recognition has been successfully deployed in good things, such as crime-fighting and terrorist-spotting. Security and access to facilities or systems may be another positive application of technology. Recognition technologies can enhance the overall experience of interacting with computers. So will FB resurrect Face.com’s face-recognition API?  And what about others? Companies like  eyebuydirect.com, or the group of bar owners in Chicago who last year planned to employ mounted cameras to “keep tabs on the male/female ratio and age mixes of their crowds so that patrons planning a night out can use mobile apps to get a real-time check of a venue’s vibe.”  Maybe employing the technology to recognize and sell to people takes it a step too far?  But maybe it’s acceptability as a digital marketing tool is inevitable.

Lots of food for thought.

Sources: http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-08-15/news/33220565_1_facial-recognition-new-app-facebook-accounts; Facebook Ireland Ltd., report of re-Audit by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner, September 21, 2012; http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/10/facedeals-check-in-on-facebook-with-facial-recognition-creepy-or-awesome/;http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/09/facebook-facial-recognition-api/; http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/business-brains/facial-recognition-for-marketing-goes-mainstream-is-this-a-good-thing/18204