The next time you glance at an ad in a mall or train station, don’t be surprised if it seems like the ad is returning the favor. The new eyebox2 from Canadian startup Xuuk, Inc. can sense when a customer up to 10 meters (about 32 feet) away looks at signage. Using the same effect that irks photographers, the eyebox2 was developed by Queen’s University professor Roel Vertegaal to “solicit the red eye effect with an infrared flash,” he says. The $999 unit can interface with computers via a USB port, and software measures the “Flow of Attention” to a display by counting overall traffic passing the signage and determining the share of consumers who saw the creative.
The eyebox2 counts heads and eye glances to compile metrics on an ad’s effectiveness. “We have been striving for the last 15 years to make eye tracking a mass input device,” he says. The computer interaction research he does at the Human Media Laboratory at Queen’s also promises new insights into the effectiveness of out-of-home marketing. Vertegaal is refining the technology so that it can register glances at items on retail shelves.