US senator up in arms over ‘spy billboards’
Print Edition
AN outdoor advertising company that owns thousands of billboards across the United States, including in Times Square, and around the world, is using mobile photo data to learn about people who are passing their displays in order to cater ads to specific consumers, and US Senator Charles Schumer wants federal officials to investigate if the practice is legal.
The company, Clear Channel Outdoor Americas, which has more than 675,000 displays in more than 40 countries, insists the information it uses is anonymous. The company said it launched a service that works with partner companies to match aggregated cellphone location data to maps of its billboards, so the company can gather information about the people who pass its displays and tell whether those people eventually end up visiting the advertiser’s stores.
The program is a partnership between the advertiser and several firms. Schumer says he believes the company has created “spying billboards”. The New York Democrat is asking the Federal Trade Commission to launch an investigation to determine whether the tracking constitutes a deceptive trade practice.
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