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Charles Pereira, CTOOver the last two decades, digital outdoor advertising has not transformed from the perspective of brand owners, businesses or the customers they are attempting to reach. It still remains a “black hole” in terms of analytics. While the widespread innovation through modernized technology has shifted the advertising landscape drastically, one aspect of online advertising has become more intrusive without much added value to the user: the cookie. The tracking cookie, built into nearly every website and digital advertising medium, was initially designed to provide a way to capture personal data about customers and their behavior. This data, then, has been used in targeting and retargeting ads, behavioral marketing tactics, and display advertising strategies as a foundational piece of the digital marketing puzzle. However, with tight privacy regulations in place, like that of GDPR and CCPA, and changing consumer preferences, brands and business owners are being compelled to rethink and restrategize their digital advertising initiatives.
“We understand trending human behavior in different environments, and the platform utilizes this data to create a better customer experience with brands”
Smart technologies and apps have been developed to allow consumers to block cookies from third parties as they desire. These updates have steered marketers in a new direction as it relates to tracking consumer behavior online, but other forces are also in play, including consumer privacy and transparency. For years, the data that cookies were able to gather was intrusive at best, pushing the limits of consumer privacy and providing no transparency, accountability, and reporting for brand owners. Additionally, cookies have limited capabilities in terms of the reach they have in predicting human behavior—much like ‘pixie dust’ for the brand owner.
With intelligent and interactive software, Alfi is changing the dynamics of digital out-of-home advertising in a unique and impactful way. The company’s proprietary platform—ALFI—harnesses the power of AI and Big Data Analytics to measure and predict the human response. This facilitates a modern and transparent approach to targeted advertising and content delivery, enabling an improved customer experience for businesses and their customers.
The ingenious Alfi platform can sense human behavior in front of a digital screen, which allows brands to capture customer demographics and display custom messaging—on the ground—on traditionally non-digital formats. While being GDPR and CCPA compliant, Alfi is a fully traceable platform, which provides not only measurable results on traditionally unmeasurable outdoor formats but also the next level of human insight. Through computer vision technology combined with machine learning and artificial intelligence, Alfi has created a model that stands out from the traditional cookie-heavy strategies. For brand owners and businesses, the cutting-edge technology developed and deployed by Alfi through intelligent software on digital screens provides both accountability and transparency in advertising efforts, as well as more robust data reporting around consumer behavior. Charles Pereira, CTO of Alfi, explains, “Years ago, we saw a problem with cookies not only from a privacy standpoint but also from transparency and reporting perspectives.
Alfi addresses these voids by utilizing computer vision to gather better metrics and deliver reporting in a compliant, less intrusive way.”
A Different Approach to Delivering Brand Experience
The waiting times can be monetized using interactive screens, engaging users with curated content at the right time and location, based on their behaviors
A Different Approach to Delivering Brand Experience
Underpinned by machine learning and artificial intelligence, Alfi’s platform has the capability to sense human behavior and respond to it, instead of relying on, what Pereira describes as, “data from lifeless screens.” Take, for example, a billboard that shows an ad over and over again based only on the amount of foot traffic that passes by, while some data may be collected on the number of people seeing that screen, the information is not robust enough to provide value to a brand owner. There are no usable metrics regarding who saw it or how they engaged. Instead, information about the number of visitors or views is estimated based on arbitrary calculations with little or no real value for a retrospective analysis of the advertising campaign. Pereira states, “We understand trending human behavior in different environments and the platform utilizes this data to create a better customer experience with brands.”
Alfi is able to accomplish this task with its cutting-edge technology that is compatible with a wide range of digital screens from 10” tablets and large kiosk screens to enormous 46 sheet billboards. “We will have a profound impact on the world of consumer analytics as it is known today” says Pereira. By layering its technology on top of customers’ screens, Alfi captures psychographic, geographic, and demographic data without violating the privacy of the end-user. The platform senses behavior, likes and dislikes, and the surrounding environment of the consumers before delivering a brand message. Pereira cites the following example, stating, “A man visiting a hospital after a family member has met with an accident is not thinking about what alcoholic beverage to get the next time he is out. Instead, he is likely considering whether his family needs life insurance, or possibly the desire to spend quality time on vacation with them.” In this scenario, screens using Alfi’s intelligent technology could help target brand messaging based on the gender, location, and behavior of the person, as opposed to his name, phone number, and other personal data collected by outdated tracking technology. Alfi’s solutions can be used to help brands and businesses more effectively target their potential customers while they wait at different venues. “The proof is in the results that Alfi is providing. Our click through rates have ranged from 7 percent to above 10 percent in some cases breaking the ceiling on even Facebook's best ever reported performance of 2.5 percent.” says Charles Pereira, CTO, Alfi. In the Digital out of Home world, numbers this high are a first.
Americans are estimated to have experienced more than 37 billion hours of waiting in the last year alone. In venues, such as airport and transport hubs, sporting events, salons and spas, hospitals, among many others, Alfi integrates with existing services and provides valuable, location-specific functionality wherever possible. Pereira explains, “The waiting times can be monetized using interactive screens, engaging users with curated content at the right time and location, based on their behaviors.”
Innovative Technology at the Forefront
The technology behind Alfi’s platform plays a critical role in the success of the company. Utilizing a feedback loop between advertisers and brand owners, and their customers or end-users, Alfi is able to provide feedback about how marketing campaigns are working in real-time. Using computer vision metrics alongside machine learning, the artificial intelligence powers the recommendation engine behind the scenes, all based on the emotional state of the consumers and the level of engagement with the content. Alfi helps create responses from consumers, based on the accurate data it collects from digital screens, to help push them further down the pipeline.
Consumer engagement is higher as ads are more targeted, leading to better outcomes for brands. Pereira explains, “Brands can be more agile with this data as it shortens the feedback loop, and it allows them to react more effectively with their advertisements over time.”
Multiple technologies work together in Alfi’s model, all with privacy and reporting objectives at the helm. No unique identifiers exist within the platform, but brand owners gain a deeper understanding of the consumers by viewing the content based on age, gender, ethnicity, emotion, and geolocation. Artificial intelligence and machine learning components of the platform also gather retina tracking data, keyword recognition, and voice intonation without compromising the privacy of the end-user. From an analytics perspective, these data points create the foundation for rich and insightful reporting instead of arbitrary calculations of ad engagement. Alfi delivers respectful content that is privacy compliant and transforms reporting to render a better user experience.
The Alfi business development team has worked tirelessly to build engaging partnerships with the leaders in the technological industry. A successful partnership with AWS, the undisputed leader in cloud computing, through the AWS Activate Program has been formed earlier this year; this partnership was soon followed by being accepted in the NVIDIA Inception program. Alfi has also formed a strong relationship with the leaders in mobile networking and device management systems AT&T and Soti Mobicontrol.
More recently, as the world society is adapting to the new post COVID-19 “new normal”, the Alfi team has been actively scouting for innovative solutions that could allow people to interact with digital screens in a secure and clean manner. This research has already generated an incredible number of conversations around potential partnerships with companies in telehealth, remote teaching and touchless screen spaces.
A Future of Industry Expansion
Throughout the last year and a half, Alfi has focused its attention on moving the needle for businesses and brand owners wanting a more robust experience for their end-users. The company’s success is highlighted by comparing the lifeless screens of traditional advertising mediums with a machine learning, computer-vision-driven AI platform. Pereira shares, “The industry average for click-through rates is well under 1 percent. That means for every thousand images shown, a small number of people interact with a specific ad placement.” For a year and a half, Alfi ran trials with its platform to gather click through and engagement data, based on its unique position in the market. Alfi has carried out numerous trials in the “wild” and in all trials so far they have been able to achieve CTR that well outperformed the industry standard, weighing in between 6 and 9 percent; they also observed that, with additional targeting the CTR can reach extremely high values, well exceeding 15 percent.
Alfi has been growing significantly based on its unique approach to advertising technology, particularly throughout companies in the EU and UK. Also, businesses and brand owners throughout the U.S. increasingly see the value of digital, interactive, intelligent screens. Alfi is at the forefront of privacy-compliant, data-rich solutions. Software from the company is being utilized on digital screens and kiosks around the world in venues with built-in idle/dwell time to monetize waiting times. From malls and airports to cabs, hospitals, and hotels, and restaurants, Alfi is delivering on its mission to improve the end-user experience with targeted content based on human behavior.
In the future, the company plans to innovate with the same AI and computer-vision technology in other fields as well. Pereira shares, “There are multiple applications where the platform can be used effectively.” Alfi’s AI software platform is an elastic solution across multiple industries that is based on delivering specifically curated content (whether a brand message, a educational lesson, a doctor's advice or just fun games) with intelligent non-intrusive technology and is leading the way to a transformative new medium.
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