OVAB Measurements

January 7, 2009 by Dave Haynes

Dave, I agree completely with your dissertation on the OVAB measurements. Before venturing into DDS several years ago we specialised for 20 or more years in Business Analytics tools and consultancy. Most of our work was for retailers. In fact much of our time was spent developing a market for what was then a radical slice and dice approach to analysis.

We worked with many statisticians and in many cases the requirement was to develop a justification for what was in many cases blindingly obvious but required a scientifically sound basis before it was accepted by the end-users.

We know from our own experience in developing ROI justifications for prospective clients that often the approach is to use a gut feeling that the project will be cost effective and then justify it.

From an analysis point of view I feel one of the more interesting developments being pioneered by us along with the likes of TruMedia is using facial recognition technology. In our case we use webcam based units. As faces come into view we lock them in to a list that can monitor up to 15 people at one time. We then record how long each face looked at a display and keep monitoring them until they go out of range. This means if an individual looks intermittently at a display we can record their total visit time as well as how long they look each time.