The Skycandy team has been hard at work since March 2010 developing Skymetrics, a breakthrough piece of facial recognition software that will allow our clients to accurately measure their audience – total impressions, length of impression, and of course time-of-day, are all recorded and stored in our secure database through the app. This data will give us and our clients valuable insight into location-based patterns, trends, and eventually audience demographics. Pretty valuable stuff, especially in a retail environment.

For digital signage, incorporating the software into your overall strategy allows you to test the effectiveness of your screen’s content and location. But its value extends beyond digital signage; any company wishing to test the effectiveness of location-based communications, from retail window displays to banners and posters, can incorporate Skymetrics into its strategy.

We’re currently testing the first iteration of the software, which includes the features mentioned above. Using only a consumer webcam and a small PC, we’re achieving surprisingly accurate results. The application is quite processor-intensive, so we’re looking into small form-factor/fast processor hardware alternatives. The new Mac Mini is a likely candidate.

Once we’ve worked out some of the kinks and we’re confident with the in-house results, we’ll be beta testing in environments with large pedestrian traffic volumes. We’ve already signed up a major call centre in Winnipeg, and we aim to begin testing there at the beginning of August.

The next development phase will involve incorporating gender and age recognition features into the software, which will add another layer of insight. Tie that to our content management system, and we’ll be able to automatically target content based on audience characteristics.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to make a post. If you are interested in becoming a beta tester, please contact us here.