The Latest in Digital Marketing: Billboards that Follow You

While many of us may associate billboards with old-school marketing campaigns (along with radio and magazine ads), the billboards of today are crossing into the territory of digital marketing by using advanced customer data collection and tracking.

Companies that make billboards like Clear Channel Outdoor leverage a web of technology to monitor people who come into geographic proximity with their billboards (using geolocation data from phones) and collect data on them, whether it is physically where these people go after viewing the billboards, what sites they visited, what apps they used, and even what movies/TV shows/songs they engaged with after (all of this data is gathered through apps and data providers). While these companies argue that the data is anonymized and aggregated for analysis purposes, companies like Clear Channel do, in fact, share identifying information with their clients and partners—sometimes identifying information such as name, address, purchase history, online behavior, and any insights into “intelligence, predispositions, and psychological trends.” One could imagine how this very sensitive information could be used to exploit people’s innermost secrets and psychologies in order to sell products or spread certain information/ideas.

Though these billboards may seem like something out of a science fiction novel set in the year 2500, the fact is that this technology is already being used quietly across the United States, including in Los Angeles where I am originally from and where I live now. While not wholly different from how websites harvest all kinds of personal data and track customers with cookies, this “out of home marketing” as Clear Channel calls it feels much more intrusive in many ways: customers probably do not assume they are being tracked (as they likely do when they are browsing online), there are no pop-ups asking to accept cookies/geolocation data collection, and, most importantly, there seems to be no way to avoid being tracked if you carry a mobile phone when you’re out in-person (whereas on the Internet, you can be careful about what search engines and sites you use to minimize data collection).

As we think about what constitutes appropriate and inappropriate data collection and privacy rights on the Internet, we can’t forget about these newer digital channels, which seem like they are here to stay.

Source: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-08-25/column-clear-channel-billboards-privacy