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New ad technology targets mobiles

An interactive advertising technology which identifies passers-by and allows them to download information to their mobile phone or PDA is being tested at the University of Southampton. BluScreen, a 58cm-wide screen displaying information about upcoming seminars, lectures and events has been installed in the reception area of the School of Electronics & Computer Science (ECS).

The screen detects the presence of people carrying Bluetooth enabled devices in its vicinity and begins to show them adverts, while at the same time building a record of what they have seen to ensure that messages are not repeated.

The team at ECS have now developed the system a stage further so that individuals passing the screen can pick an advert they like and have the information downloaded to their phone so that they can access it at a later stage. Viewers select the adverts of interest to them on a touchscreen in the reception area, signalling if they would like more information sent to their phone, and they then receive a ‘business card’ download with just the URLs of the websites with further information, which they can access in their own time.

Dr Terry Payne, who helped develop the technology, said: “This could work really well in the cinema where people are relaxing and then see something that interests them which they would like to follow up afterwards. “There has been a lot of talk over the past few years about using smart tags to track the whereabouts of individuals. “The thinking behind BluScreen is that everybody has a phone these days, so why not use this instead?”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .