The public advertising market is a $30.4 billion large market with big, mammoth companies and thousands of SMEs. The market is already in mature phase that means it is very difficult to bring some really innovative solution on the market and to break through the walls and limitations. Therefore in order to capture a small piece from that or to increase the market share it is essential to find out innovative ideas that can revolutionize the complete sector or change its direction. Probably one of the most emerging market segment is the digital signage market which aims to monitor the statistical distribution of the audience of the public advertisements. This includes the anonymous audience counting, the gender and age recognition and even the emotion analysis. The task is not easy at all since the desired accuracy has to reach the 95 % success rate in the gender and age recognition at any circumstances with the highest level of the protection of personal data and privacy. However several already known solutions are stepped in the market since 2011 no one could make a breakthrough due to the above mentioned challenges.
ADMOS is a kind of project focusing on the monitoring of the effectiveness of the public advertisements. Our major goal is to develop a compact media monitoring device, which is able to follow up and provide useful statistical information from a defined advertisement or a whole campaign in order to measure and determinate their effectiveness and success. Therefore the device can count the people who looked at the multimedia billboard and can also determinate their gender and their age group. An additional extra feature is the ADMOS can also check the board itself providing useful information about the status of the advertisement for the advertisers and the billboards owners. During the development of the complete system data protection and privacy issues were always in the spotlight taking into account the national and EU relevant data protection acts and rules and considering the suggestions of the external independent experts. Therefore we can state that ADMOS is right now probably the only digital signage device currently on the EU market that fulfils the EU data protection and privacy regulations in 100 %.
Our system consists two cameras (crowd and board), integrated together with a mobile communication unit, in order to monitor and analyze the collected data anywhere and in anytime. The system also provides the opportunity to check the device from 0 – 24 h and to send automatic alerts in case of any failure.
As a result ADMOS will offer for the advertiser and media owner a powerful digital signage tool for continuous audience monitoring on a highest accuracy and quality level for any advertising board (digital or paper based) preserve the audience anonymity and privacy. To gain wide spectrum of users ADMOS can offer an easy-to-use interface designed by the latest trends with perfect quality, as our clients can check the effectiveness of their media campaign anytime from anywhere.
Objectives
The ADMOS project is two years long, it was started on the 1st of September 2013 and ended on the 31th August 2015.
The main objective of the ADMOS project is to develop a universal public media monitoring and analysis system that can be used basically on any indoor or outdoor media surface. The device can provide precious data for the advertiser, media owner about the number of the people who are actually look at the given advertisements and also can determinate their gender and define their age groups.
Beside the public monitoring the ADMOS system is able to scan the billboard itself with an additional board camera to give feedback about the status of the advertisement. All of these features are managed by a cutting edge web application or graphical user interface that allows for the ADMOS costumers to follow the success and effectivity of complete media campaigns and even a desired billboard. This device management software is a crucial part of the system since real-time statistic can be acquired in any time making the marketing decision easier and faster.
In order to achieve these overall goals the following objectives were identified in project period:
- To understand the end-user requirements, the data protection requirements and privacy regulations regarding to the ADMOS needs.
- To specify the ADMOS system and to develop the hardware and software models based on the system specification.
- To select the right hardware components (crowd camera, board camera, end-point system) and to identify and specify the software developer environment for the further developments
- To design the concept of the database concept and the graphical user interface.
- To develop the smart firmware for defining the age, gender distribution of the counted audience.
- To create the end-point intelligent control software for the selected hardware of the proposed ADMOS system.
- To develop the server side of the ADMOS including database design and design of the communication protocol.
- To produce ten prototypes keeping the estimated, planned cost for the system.
- To validate subsystems independently and the entire system thereafter.
- To ensure that the ADMOS system cannot be accessed physically or through the internet in order to get actual images of the public. To get ethical approvals/opinions/notifications by the competent legal local/national Ethics Boards/Bodies/administrations and submit it to the European Commission before the start of the field test validation process.
- To identify, protect and allocate exploitable IP developed in the project by the RTD partners and to transfer the generated IP from RTD partners to SME partners by providing sufficient documentation, presentations and personal training.
- To disseminate the results of the project in scientific, industrial and informative aspects.
Results
In parallel with the system development the Consortium investigated the relevant EU and national data protection regulations and directives regarding to the image capturing and analysis. The Consortium contacted 28 national data protection authorities (DPA) in Europe, presented the concept of the ADMOS. Three independent data protection experts guided the Consortium’s work with their skills. It was found that the ADMOS prototype complies for the requirements and regulations, if the realization of the device will be done according to the specification.
The Consortium submitted application of approval for the device and for the testing to the Hungarian and to the English data protection authorities. Both authority accepted the applications and gave a written approval.
During the hardware and electronics design the end point image processing electronics was selected. In parallel with the electronics selection SHU investigated the suitable camera and lens systems. Finally two different types of crowd camera was and applied in the final system. The housing and the wiring was done during the integration period without any problem.
From the server side the specification of the database and server computer were clarified. Thereafter the implementation of the database structure was performed and the testing with pre-generated, dummy data was done.
The Consortium developed the communication protocols which was realized on three levels: end point electronics, server side, client side (GUI). In order to make the communication between the server and the end point smoothly two special communication modules were developed.
The consortium developed the proper image processing algorithm which is the key part of the system. This module is able to detect faces and to determine their gender and age groups under real-time operation.
A remote monitoring graphical user interface was also developed (client side) in which the user/client can follow and manage their boards and campaigns and also can reach real time statistical analysis from the raw data.
The system tests were performed in two shopping malls in Hungary and in the U.K.
Field test in Hungary
Field test in UK
