The New York Times reports that Clear Channel Outdoor America which has thousands of billboards across the U.S., wiil announce on Monday that it has partnered with several companies,
including AT&T to track people’s travel patterns and behaviors through their mobile phones. Creepy. The report says that "By aggregating the trove of data from these companies, Clear Channel
Outdoor hopes to provide advertisers with detailed information about the people who pass its billboards to help them plan more effective, targeted campaigns. With the data and analytics, Clear Channel
Outdoor could determine the average age and gender of the people who are seeing a particular billboard in, say, Boston at a certain time and whether they subsequently visit a store."
Read the whole story at The New York Times »
Is this an example of diminishing marginal returns? Seems like a lot of collection, matching and segmentation has to happen, in order for determining the results. Or is it in large measure a way for Clear Channel to try and keep billboards relevant by trying to apply more data analysis? I wonder if it is overkill.