Intel video presentation looks at audience counting in grocery

July 28, 2009 by Dave Haynes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibAFvT_Vr7s

I saw a few things on Twitter this morning about Intel technology and how it is “driving the future” digital signage technology, and followed the trail to this YouTube video. The four-minute-plus video gives what I would best describe as a fleeting explanation as to why Intel chipsets are the future, but the piece is nonetheless a nice, polished introductory piece to targeted advertising and particularly to audience-counting and analytics technology.

The video references Cognovision and shows how its biometric face counting stuff is deployed in Whole Foods Market through another Toronto-area company, The Marketplace Station.

If you have chatted with Haroon Mirza from Cognovision but never met him, he’s the guy pushing the shopping cart and looked enchanted by the screens. The video also gives you a sense of how the install is done in Whole Foods – screens dropped from the ceiling, but nested pretty tight to the aisles.

As for Intel, the company is certainly part of the future of DS, but whether it’s their chipsets or little embedded things from Texas Instruments or Samsung, it’s still just stuff. The future is what’s on the screen, not the stuff making the pretty pictures show up. My guess is a very high percentage of the industry has “Intel Inside” right now, but that probably mirrors what is happening generally with the market share for chipsets. 

Probably most of the industrail strength software guys in the space right now will be using Intel or AMD for years to come, but the embedded stuff that’s under the hood of set-top boxes is getting more sophisticated and powerful, and there are already companies offering slick solutions not based on PC technology.  

Disclaimer – my company pressDOOH does some writing work for The Marketplace Station